


Growing Pains

by Induurisa



Series: X-Men: Genesis [1]
Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Abuse, Anxiety, Child Abuse, Coercion, Coping, Crime, Explicit Language, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Manipulation, Mutants, Origin Story, POV First Person, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Repression, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-11 15:10:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 50,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19930102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Induurisa/pseuds/Induurisa
Summary: Scott Summers' powers manifest for the first time, and he's lost, scared, and alone. Another mutant, Jack Winters, takes advantage of his vulnerability and uses the fifteen-year-old boy for his own purposes under the guise of "helping" Summers. After Scott finally escapes Winters' control, he finds a new home with Professor Charles Xavier.





	1. Running

**Author's Note:**

> This is sort of my take on the whole Scott Summers origin story, referenced (sometimes directly) from the comics (primarily Uncanny X-Men #38-42, as well as Children of the Atom #2-3, Classic X-Men #40-42, and whatever else I remember from my readings). More intense than the comics, and from Scott's POV. 
> 
> Though many of the big ideas are taken from the comics, I've put my own personal spin on it all, and tried to make sense of things from the perspective of a young person thrust into a world of doubt and confusion when he's still trying to figure out who he is as a person. Expect an unreliable narrator.
> 
> The time period is never really set in stone for this, so expect inconsistencies there. This is mainly unedited and written in a short time period as a tentative part one to a several part series of the genesis of the X-Men, all from the point of view of Scott Summers, the "first X-Man," and heavily influenced by the comics.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scott's powers manifest.

I think every kid thinks about running away at some point in their lives. A lot of the time it’s a spur-of-the-moment thing, where the kid is upset about something and thinks that by running away, all their problems will be solved, or at the very least, avoided. How exactly running would help isn’t usually something kids think about. Sometimes it’s because they think that it will make their family miss them when they’re gone, and then they’ll come right back to their worried family and reap the attention their stunt has brought. I’ve read about things like that in the papers.

Just last week, as a matter of fact. There was a little girl, only ten years old, who ran away for a week to get her mom to pay more attention to her. The article was written by the same girl, only fifteen years after the fact. The girl, now woman, said that it all seemed so surreal at the time. Like it was just a game.

It’s not a game to me. I have no parents from whom I want attention. Truth be told, I’ve thought about running away from the State Home for Foundlings ever since I arrived there seven years ago. But I didn’t really _want_ to run away. I didn’t mean for this to happen.

* * *

“What, you’re not gonna come in with us, Scotty?” Nate asked, nudging my shoulder just a little too hard. I looked at the ground—red—just like everything else since I was twelve and got prescribed my dumb ruby quartz glasses by that specialist in Washington.“N-no, I think I’ll just wait out here. ’S not like I have any spending money anyway,” I said with a shrug, still looking at the ground. Nate chuckled and then punched the same shoulder—again, just a little too hard. It stung.

“Suit yourself, Summers. Figures _you’re_ the only one Milbury didn’t allocate an allowance to, huh? Man, everyone hates you here, even the big man.” I still didn’t look up as Nate left my side and went into the store with the other kids and our chaperone who was assigned to accompany our group while we were in town.

I hated it, but it’s not like I had anywhere else to go. Nate was the only one who even bothered speaking to me. Maybe because I’ve saved his bullied ass too many times to count. We were both outcasts in the orphanage, so we just drifted together, even though I didn’t like him at all. Something about him had always rubbed me the wrong way, and that wasn’t even counting his jerk attitude.

Sighing, I shoved my hands into my pockets as I watched the cars go by on the road in front of the shop. I watched families in their minivans and walking hand-in-hand on the street and felt the fingers of jealousy grasping at my heart. I saw other kids my age flock together and chatter amongst one another as they swaggered down the sidewalk and window-shopped for clothing far too expensive for their budgets. I looked away. No point making things more miserable. I was already pretty good at wallowing in my own self-pity. There were people who had it worse. Who was I to complain? At least I had a roof over my head.

I was watching some construction work a couple blocks away when a man in a dark green coat came bustling around the corner and ran right into me before I could finish saying “Excuse me,” even though I had been the one just standing there. We lost our balance as he flailed his arms, one of his hands striking me in the face and knocking my glasses aside. The man fell on top of me, knocking the air out of me, and when I opened my eyes from wincing in pain, something happened that scared the hell out of me.

The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the construction crane across the way. There was a slight tingle, and then a bit of a burning sensation behind my eyes, and then it was just _falling._ Like something had hit it, hard. Hard enough to warp the metal trusses and snap them right in two. I was still on the ground, staring up at the crane as the man who’d run into me got up in a heartbeat and kept on running. People were screaming around me. The kids and families I’d seen were in disarray. The crane was falling towards them. It was falling towards _me._

My eyes widened in fear, and I was sure that this was it. What a sad life. I didn’t even get to _do_ anything. No one had ever even wanted me, like they had with Alex. Poor little orphaned Scott Summers, obliterated by a freak crane accident. But as I watched the crane slice through the air towards me, the ruptured and twisted metal starting to crunch against the roofs of the buildings across the street, I saw it just _disintegrate_ in front of my eyes. No, not even that. Blown away. Blown to hell.

It was only after the crane had somehow been obliterated as soon as it had begun to fall that I started registering what exactly the people around me were screaming about, and not all of it was about the crane.

“Oh my god! What the hell did he _DO?_ ”

“What’s wrong with him?!”

“Call the police!”

“Get away from that freak, Becca!”

“Run! He’ll kill us all with his laser eyes!”

“Did you see what he did to that crane?!”

“He’ll kill us just by looking at us!”

“He still has his eyes open—watch out!”

No. No, no, no. It couldn’t be _me._ That was impossible. I closed my eyes. The tingling sensation stopped. My head started to hurt again. Needed my glasses. Just had to find my glasses… I groped around the sidewalk, eyes still shut tight, until I managed to find them. They were slightly bent—someone must have stepped on them in the panic—but I crammed them onto my face anyway and opened my eyes again. Then I realized that when I’d opened my eyes before without my glasses, everything had still been red. Red without the ruby quartz lenses. _What was going on?_ I got to my feet, swaying slightly, disoriented, as some people backed away from me and others advanced with a threatening gait I recognized well from the bullies at the orphanage.

“What happened? What—?” I began, but I was cut off before I could begin to question what had gone down.

“You zapped that crane with your laser eyes, freak! You almost killed us all! He’s a _mutant!”_

“He’ll kill everyone if he takes those weird shades off again! C’mon, we’ve gotta take him down, or we’re all dead.”

There was so much yelling. Shouting. Screaming. I didn’t even like being around people much normally. I _hated_ the spotlight. I’d kept to myself for years in the orphanage. And now, there was a growing mob, and men and women were stalking towards me with clenched fists. I raised my hands in surrender, trying to calm them while also shielding myself.

“Please, I didn’t… It wasn’t me! I don’t know what’s going on! What are you talking about?” _Laser eyes?_ No, no, no. No. I’m not a mutant. Not like in those sensational articles in the tabloids. It wasn’t me. It couldn’t have been.

“Shut up, mutie freak! Come on, guys! Take him out! Can’t open his fuckin’ eyes if we knock ‘im out!”

“Or stab those laser eyes out! Take out his eyes! Then he can’t hurt anyone!”

I backed up against the storefront wall as the mob tightened around me, closing in for the kill. My heart threatened to beat out of my chest as I kept my hands raised, the bricks of the shop wall hard against my spine.

“Please, just—” I started, interrupted as someone’s heavy purse came swinging from my left. I ducked away, scraping my elbows on the store wall and keeping my hands raised, now closer to my body in a defensive position learned from dozens of fights over the years. In any other situation, it might have been funny. Here I was without a cent to spare, and someone had just tried to hit me over the head with their spare change.

But the purse was only the beginning. Small rocks dug out from crevices in the sidewalk came at me like hailstones. Someone threw their drink. A baby rattle, of all things, struck my shoulder. I started running, pushing through them, trying to get away—needed to get away—what was happening? I was so scared. I couldn’t think. Everything was a red blur. Someone tripped me up, and I stumbled and fell, this time scraping one of my knees—my pant leg was darker red than it had been—blood—no time—had to get away—

I ducked down an alley with the mob at my heels, the yelling just behind me. I moved on instinct, on stuff I’d seen in movies, knocking over a garbage can to block my path, then darting down another alley, trying to shake them.

“What’s happening to me, what is _happening_ to me—?” I muttered as I ran, putting my hands to my head. I was crying, the first time I’d cried in years after I’d trained myself out of it in the orphanage. Nate had made fun of me when I woke up from my nightmares in tears. He’d brought his own bullies breathing down my neck. I had stopped crying after that.

But now I was crying again.

“He ran down this way!”

“Let’s just hope we can handle him when we catch him! With those blasted eyes of his, he must be practically a walking death ray!”

I sniffed and wiped my cheeks with sweaty palms as I sprinted away from the voices and the sound of footsteps that were growing ever closer. I tried to keep my footfalls light as I turned down the block and into another street. I didn’t see the mob, but I could still hear it. I had to keep running. There were police sirens. Oh, god. What had I done? What was wrong with me? I could never go back to the orphanage now. People back there had cameras. They’d have taken photos, and video. Everyone would be looking for me, and... Oh, hell, maybe I deserved to be locked up for what I did, if that was really me who’d wrecked that crane. I had to know for sure, though. 

I turned another block, finally starting to feel like I might have a chance at losing them. Couldn’t test it now. Not here. Not when I could put more people in danger if I did have some sort of weird laser vision. God, the sirens. It used to be so easy to tune them out in the city. But knowing they were after _me?_ I was panting as I ran down a vacant street, and seeing a bike locked to a lamppost, I slowed to a stop in front of it. Faster than on foot. And I supposed there wouldn’t be a better time to test out my laser eyes than now. I crouched in front of the lock and was careful to position myself so that the only thing getting destroyed would be the ground in front of me and the lock itself.

The glasses came off, but I kept my eyes shut at first. The shouts for my head were getting louder again. Someone was speaking through a megaphone, probably a policewoman, to try and control the rampant crowd that had gathered, but I wasn’t paying attention. I opened one eye hesitantly, squinting the other shut, and looked at the lock.

The lock was gone before I could react quickly enough to close my eye, and I yelped in alarm as the sidewalk shattered and cracked into dust at my feet, sending me stumbling back. I closed my eye and shoved my glasses back onto my face, heart still racing. There had been a weird sound that had accompanied the lasers, or whatever it was, that was coming out of my eye. I hadn’t noticed it before. Sort of like the sound a bottle of soda makes as you open it—the carbon dioxide escaping, but louder and more resonant—and punctuated with almost a sizzling electric tone.

I got to my feet and pushed off the remains of the lock mechanism, which looked more like they’d been ripped apart than burned apart. Weird, but I didn’t have time to think about it now. I muttered a quiet “Sorry” to the ruined sidewalk that now had a sizable hole in it, and another “Sorry” to the person whose bicycle I was commandeering before taking off.

Just had to get out of town. Out of the city. Out of the state. I didn’t know where I was going. I just had to get away.

But my little field test back there had confirmed at least one thing for me. I was a mutant, like the freaks in the papers. And I had nowhere to go.

* * *

I hadn’t eaten breakfast that morning, and my group from the orphanage was supposed to have had lunch after shopping, so by dusk my stomach was growling incessantly. I hadn’t had anything since dinner yesterday, and I never really ate all that much to begin with. I was a skinny kid.

The bike bumped along through the woods—the tires weren’t made for off-roading, just for city travel—and I bit my tongue on accident as I ran over a particularly rough spot, tasting blood. I hadn’t really paused to think yet. Even if I had, I couldn’t do much thinking at all when my head felt like it was ready to split open from one of my chronic migraines. It hurt. Biting my tongue seemed to make it hurt less. My head wasn’t the only thing killing me, though. I’d been riding for hours. Almost nonstop since noon. My legs felt like lead, or maybe mush. Something in between.

“What am I supposed to do?” I whispered under my breath, my fingers tightening around the handlebars as I glanced to my left to see the headlights of the cars on the nearby road flashing through the trees. As it was getting darker, my vision was getting more and more poor, and I didn’t have a flashlight. I didn’t have anything but the clothes on my back and a stolen bike. I’d have to stop soon.

Fate seemed to agree as I hit a gopher hole with my front tire and felt myself get flung through the air, over and off the bike, and into a patch of shrubs and thorns a couple meters away. My hand had gone to my face on instinct to hold my glasses over my eyes, so I only had one hand free to aid in breaking my fall. It still hurt like hell as I smashed into the ground, jarring my hip and scraping pretty much everything that hadn’t already been scraped up from my initial escape earlier. I got up with a groan, pulling thorns from where they’d stuck into my hands and peeling them from my pant leg, trying to avoid further injuring myself. With my luck, I’d probably landed in a patch of poison ivy or poison oak, too. Guess I’d find that out later.

I limped over to the fallen bike, squinting in the darkness, but my ride was a lost cause. The front wheel was bent out of shape. There was no way it was going anywhere again. Absently, I thought it a shame that I couldn’t bring it to a landfill instead of leaving it out in the woods. I was littering. I always hated it when people didn’t pick up after themselves. But then again, it wouldn’t be my first criminal act of the day.

Hell, I’d demolished a _fucking crane._ Oh, god. Oh, god. What if people had been killed? What if… Oh, god. I bit my lip and stumbled up against a tree, sinking down into the pile of rotting leaves at its base with my back against the trunk and my head in my hands.

“What _am_ I?” I mumbled, pushing my palms against my face and underneath my glasses. I felt my eyelids beneath my fingers, felt my glasses fall soundlessly into my lap. “Oh, god…” I was a broken record. “Oh, god. Help me. Help me…” I was crying again. Hot tears against my fingers. I wondered if I could blow my own hands off with my laser eyes or if my skin would stop the beams the same way my eyelids were somehow being kept from being ripped to shreds. Somewhat foolishly, I opened my eyes with my hands still covering them.

There was that tingling sensation—and that burning sensation, but less pronounced than before—and I felt the force from my eyes tickling my palms, but not harming them. My migraine ebbed as I kept my eyes open, staring into the red light cupped in front of my face.

I don’t know how long I sat like that. My whole body ached, but at least my head wasn’t hurting anymore. I was so tired. So scared. I might have been alone all my life, but I’d never been… _Alone_ alone. There were doctors, and teachers, and other adults who at least helped me out of obligation. But now I couldn’t even go to the police. I didn’t have any money. I didn’t have transportation. Even if I did, I didn’t have anywhere to _go._

Closing my eyes, I reached back into my lap to place my glasses back on my face, fingers trembling slightly and my muscles and injuries protesting. It was just about dark now. I could hardly see a meter in front of my eyes—though there was a slight glow I noticed emanating from them.

I thought of Alex, and my parents. I couldn’t remember their names. Just flashes. Moments. My dad running around the yard with me on his shoulders. My mom tending to my bloodied forehead after my dad hadn’t seen a low-hanging branch and ran me right into it. Even my memory of Alex was hazy. The doctors had said I had amnesia from hitting my head in the plane crash. Maybe it’s better that I don’t remember everything, because it’s painful enough as it is with the fragments I do have. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have any of it.

I drew my knobby knees towards my chest and wrapped my arms around them, shivering slightly. It was autumn in Nebraska. It was getting colder, and even freaks like me would have to find shelter in the coming weeks. The clothes I had on now were slightly shredded from falling and having things thrown at me earlier; my too-big jacket had a big tear on the back where I was pushed against the storefront wall, and the knees of my pants were dark with dried and fresh blood and torn. My t-shirt was rumpled and had spots of what might have been blood, but could have been from something thrown at me.

But where could I go? I hardly knew anything outside of the orphanage and the town I’d just fled near Omaha. I didn’t have any connections. After getting my hopes up when I was twelve when Rick and Trish Bogart expressed interest in adopting me and then vanished off the face of the earth, I had no one outside the walls of the State Home for Foundlings. I still didn’t know what happened to them. Maybe they just decided they didn’t want me. Wouldn’t be so surprising, really. Maybe they saw that I would be a mutant freak somehow, and just… No, no. I was overthinking it. Was I? I was just a dumb, skinny kid who liked planes and had sensitive eyes.

I chuckled into the darkness, my chin on my knees. Ha. Sensitive eyes, for sure. Now I was packing a bazooka behind each eyeball. How’s that for sensitive eyes? I didn’t even think mutants were real. Just tabloid fiction. Urban legends. Maybe this was all just a bad dream? But no, my only dreams were a different sort of nightmare, and my dreams never _hurt_ like this one. At the thought, my scrapes and cuts seemed to remind me of their existence, and I felt the pounding pain of them like a reminder that, no, this was real, this was me, and this was hell.

“I just wanna disappear,” I mumbled into my knees, tilting my head so that my forehead now rested on my scabbed knees instead of my chin. “Why can’t I be one of the disappearing mutants? Why me? Why is this happening to me? Just wanna disappear. Don’t know what to do…”

So tired. I didn’t remember falling asleep.

* * *

Falling. The parachute wasn’t opening. I held onto Alex so tightly I think I was hurting him. He was already screaming, so I couldn’t tell.

The chute opened and yanked us out of the fall. It jarred me so much I almost lost my grip. Alex was still screaming, and I realized that I was screaming, too. Screaming for my mom and dad. Something exploded above us.

I was yelling into Alex’s ear, trying to reassure him, saying it would be okay, as if saying it louder could make it more true. He still screamed. I had to hold on tight. Couldn’t let go. Had to hold on. My mom had told me to hold on. Mom…

Falling again. The parachute—burning. I was screaming again with Alex as we fell towards the trees. The branches and twigs and leaves cut at us. I released the parachute. I turned my body to curl around Alex. Still holding on. Couldn’t let go. Couldn’t ever let go.

Pain, bright and blinding, in my head.

Darkness.

Falling. Burning. Losing my grip. Burning. Screaming.

_“HELP ME!”_

Falling. Burning. Screaming.

I lost my grip.

Falling.

Darkness.


	2. Train

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frightened and on the run, Scott hops a train to get out of Omaha. It all seemed so much easier in the movies and the books.

I woke up the next morning with my face pressed against a patch of leaves, the morning dew wet against my cheek. For a moment, I forgot what had happened the day before, but then when I sat up, it all came rushing back.

I promptly keeled over and threw up in the leaves that had been my pillow last night, coughing and gasping unceremoniously on my hands and knees. There wasn’t much to vomit in the first place—my stomach growled to remind me of that fact—and my eyes watered as I continued to cough and hack until my throat was cleared and there was nothing left in my stomach at all. I felt like crying again as hopelessness came crushing back down on me. But I didn’t. I was numbed by the despair.

My stomach growled again, louder. God, I was starving. The food at the orphanage had been crap, but at least it had been _food_. I’d have to find something soon. And water. I was thirsty. I’d almost forgotten that I needed to hydrate, too.

“Alright, Summers. Get… get yourself together. Just need t’… need to find some food and water. Follow the road. Follow…” I muttered as I wiped my mouth of bile with the back of my hand and struggled to my feet. I looked down at myself in the morning light, trying to assess the damage and if I could even walk into a general store without raising suspicion. I looked like shit. Not good. Shaking my head, I pushed my glasses further up my nose and started on my way, following the road and hoping something would come to me.

It was slow going. I’d thought of running away so many times before, but never actually done it. Never actually made a _plan._ I needed a plan. Needed some sort of control and order. Right now, I was just a leaf in the wind.

“No, I’m following the road. I have a plan. Or at least a path,” I said to myself, holding my injured elbows as I trudged along, my hip aching from where I’d slammed into the ground from my bike accident yesterday and my knees still scraped up as well. Hopefully I didn’t get an infection or something. “Least there wasn’t any poison ivy or oak back there,” I said, as if to try and brighten my outlook, however slightly. It didn’t work.

I must have walked for hours. The sunlight filtered through the trees and warmed by back as it moved across the sky. It must have been noon when I reached the train tracks.

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…” I turned right, away from the road, down the tracks. I walked right in between the two rails, stepping on the wooden slats for each step like a child. Balancing. There was a stiff, cool breeze that ruffled my hair, grabbing at the messy strands and combing through it to remove some fragments of the leaves I had slept in last night that had hitched a ride with me. I kept walking. My stomach growled.

It was dusk again when I reached the back end of a train, and after looking around the area from the trees, I ascertained that this train was an active one. There were people, up by the train engine itself. I’d been looking for transportation. Well. Here it was. Like in the movies and the books I’d read, I’d be hitching a ride on a train. Classic, right? I scouted out the cars, trying the doors. All were locked. Okay, so not quite like the movies. There was always supposed to be an open one. Some convenient Deus ex machina to save the hero.

I wasn’t a hero, though. I was the villain here. A destructive freak of nature on the run from the law and from people in general.

I kept searching up the tracks, testing car by car, hoping that one would be open. I couldn’t get too close to the front of the train. A couple men were there, milling around by the engine. The movement I’d noticed earlier when I’d been looking from the cover of the trees. I wasn’t sure why they’d stopped the train here, but I didn’t care to find out. It was getting dark again, and I couldn’t see very well anymore. Meanwhile, my stomach had decided to mostly shut up, finally. Instead of growling, there was just a gnawing pain in my gut.

“Ah!” I grinned as I saw my own personal ex machina. Not an unlocked boxcar, but a flatbed car with huge pipes tied down on it. Pipes big enough for me to crawl inside and hunker down in for the trip to god-knows-where. I clambered onto the flatbed as noises started coming from further down the tracks. The train was starting up. Hissing noises and low rumblings echoed around me and resonated through the car as I pulled myself up and into one of the pipes. It was getting cold again. I crawled further into the middle of the pipe, leaning my back against the side of the pipe and bracing my feet against the curve of it in front of me as I drew my limbs close together to conserve heat.

The rumbling intensified, and there was surprisingly very little of a lurch as I felt the train begin to move. I was so thirsty. My mouth was dry. Tomorrow, I’d have to find something to drink at the very least. Food could wait, though it sucked to be without it for this long. What I wouldn’t give for a McDonalds burger and some greasy fries, along with a large Coke.

I closed my eyes and drew my jacket closer about my shoulders, hugging my arms to my chest. Just thinking about food was torture, but it was better than thinking too hard about my situation.

It was all such a blur. It didn’t seem real. The article I’d read had been right—it was so strange, like I wasn’t even really there in that pipe as the train rattled along beneath me, like it was all just a fever dream. Thinking of it as reality was almost too much. But it wasn’t a game. It hurt. It hurt so much. I couldn’t control _anything_ in my life so far, and now I have fucking _lasers_ that shot out of my eyes without the stupid, stupid glasses I’d been prescribed for my headaches years ago. Laser eyes! Or something like lasers. It was hard to tell.

I tried to take an objective point of view. Analyzing things from a distance like that was easier. As if I was looking at someone else’s life instead of my own. The sidewalk I’d obliterated when I’d busted the lock on the bike hadn’t been melted or had orange-hot edges or anything. It was just smashed to bits. So… did I just _hit stuff_ with my eyes? Really hard?

A light chuckle escaped my lips as I sniffled from the growing cold. It sounded so silly and stupid. How the hell could this even be happening to me? I wasn’t special. I was just some weird orphan kid that no one ever wanted and no one ever would want. Except now maybe as a portable laser gun turret, apparently. A living weapon. That’s all I was now.

I thought of Alex. I wondered where he was. What he was doing. He wasn’t a mutant either, was he? Was it a genetic thing? Like blonde hair or blue eyes? He was probably fine. He had all the luck, apparently. Too young to really remember the crash like I did, and young and cute enough to be adopted right after being released from the hospital while I was still in a coma. No one ever wanted me. Not one. Except for the Bogarts, but they… They were gone, too. They must have realized their mistake in thinking about adopting a brain-damaged kid. And now no one would ever want me. Who would want a mutant freak?

* * *

When the train finally came to another stop in the afternoon of the second day on the run, I was parched and more starving than ever. I stank. My head was hurting again. And I had to relieve myself of what little fluids I still had left in me, and I’d been holding it since the morning.

Blessedly, the coast was clear at the train station—it was a freight train, and there weren’t a whole lot of people around the train yard—and there was a lot of cover. I climbed down from my makeshift shelter in the pipes and scurried behind cars as I scoped the place out. I was pretty sure we weren’t in Nebraska anymore after almost a day’s journey.

I kept an eye out for cameras as I darted to the outer fence and climbed up the chain link, careful at the top due to the barbed wire coils. Still, even as careful as I was trying to be, I jabbed and sliced myself a few times on the twisted metal, tearing my clothes even further. My head was spinning. I felt faint as I tried to place my foot in between the chain links, slipping. So thirsty…

* * *

“… and then I told ‘er, Sunshine, you an’ me are gonna—oh, hey, lookie here, Robbie. Kid’s awake.”

“Hm? Oh, yeah. Hey, kid. You alright? Ah, shit, he’s…”

“… what he was doing climbin’ outta the yard, prob’ly graffiti or somethin’. Skinny as a rod, though. And look at the state he’s in, Rob. A damn mess. You called the cops, right?”

“Yeah, yeah. Should be here soon. Kid can’t be older than fourteen, looks like. Kenny, looks like he’s wakin’ up again. Kid? Son? Anyone in there?”

“Huh…” I felt my head pounding again as I opened my eyes, confused and dazed and feeling like shit. Big mistake.

“Holy fuck! Get out of the way!”

“Jesus Christ!”

My vision was red as I stared up at the ceiling—then there was no more ceiling, and I closed my eyes as quickly as I’d opened them. Debris rained down into the room, but thankfully most of it had been blown away. Oh, god. My glasses. “My glasses! I need my glasses! Where are my glasses?!”

“Holy shit, this is the kid from Omaha!”

I squinted my eyes shut as hard as I could as I flailed around and tried to get my bearings. I seemed to be on a small couch—I rolled off and stumbled headlong into an owner of one of the two voices I’d heard in my semi-conscious state. Large hands grasped my arms, and I yelped in fear as I jerked away.

“I need my glasses! Help me!” My voice was a terrified squeak. “I can’t open my eyes! Please!”

“Give ‘im his damn shades, Robbie! Quick!” The other voice, from a little further away. I held my forearm in front of my face and felt around with my other hand, and then my glasses were suddenly jammed roughly onto my face, probably bending them further. I slowly opened my eyes as I felt a wall against my fingertips.

“Cops should be here any minute, Ken! Just stay back from the freak! Must’ve been runnin’ from Omaha or somethin’!” One of the burly men, Robbie, I inferred, backed away from me, and I didn’t waste time looking around my surroundings any more than necessary before locating the door and making a run for it. The police would be after me, again. Even in a different _state_ , I was a wanted man. Or wanted kid, or something. I sprinted down the hall—there were train photos and a few posters taped up—must have been inside a building at the train station.

My heart sank as I heard sirens approaching.

“Oh, no, no, no…” I mumbled under my breath as I followed the “EXIT” signs to the nearest door to the outside. I yanked it open and kept running, my head pounding and my mouth as dry as sandpaper. I gasped for breath as I ran as fast as my long, skinny legs would take me to the fence, and I started climbing it again, not sure where I would end up as long as I was out of here before the police arrived. The sirens were getting louder. Had to run. So tired. So thirsty. So hungry. Had to pee. Head hurt. Hip hurt. Hurt all over. Must have fallen from the fence when I was climbing down.

I dropped to the ground on the other side, this time retaining consciousness, and made for the nearest row of run-down buildings for cover. Kept running. People on the sidewalk gave me weird looks. As I ran, the population grew more dense. I had to find a different place to hunker down—somewhere with fewer people. Where _was_ I? The street names weren’t familiar. I didn’t recognize anything.

I passed a newsstand and picked up the title as I darted by: The Baltimore Sun. I was in Maryland.

The sirens had faded slightly. I slowed down, trying not to draw attention to myself. But people were still curious and disgusted by my appearance. Tall, lanky kid with shredded clothes and red shades. Don’t see that every day, I guess. Even in Baltimore.

I ducked into an alley for a breather, my migraine getting worse by every step I took, and my limbs feeling like they weren’t even mine anymore as I stumbled against the wall and sat down beside a dumpster in a pile of garbage that hadn’t quite made it inside the bin. Didn’t matter. I was already smelly from my days on the lam.

I couldn’t think straight. I let my head fall forwards onto my knees, banging my forehead against my scabs a little harder than I’d intended. I felt like I had when the boys at the orphanage had spiked my drink that one time. Like I wasn’t in full control. Like I was manipulating a marionette and wasn’t quite sure how the strings worked.

_< Scott…>_

“Th… Wha…?” I mumbled, blinking behind my glasses and lifting my head with considerable effort.

_< Scott…>_

Weird. I must have been imagining things. Maybe someone was calling to another Scott on the street outside the alley.

_< Scott Summers…>_

“Who’s… Who’s there? Hello?” I asked, my tongue thick and heavy in my mouth. So thirsty. I looked from side to side, trying to find the owner of the voice.

_< Come here, son…>_

“Wh-where? Where are you? Who are you?” I asked. If it was the police, I was too tired to run anymore. I could hear the sirens getting closer again. They’d lock me up forever and maybe run experiments on me and that would be that. Maybe it would have been better if I’d just died in the plane crash. Just given my little brother the chute. Gone up in flames with my parents. I didn’t notice when I’d started crying again, and it surprised me that I still had liquid to spare for tears as they ran down my cheeks.

_< Follow my voice, Summers…>_

I felt my body rise from where I’d been sitting in the trash pile, but this time it wasn’t like _I_ was the one pulling the strings anymore. There was a weird tugging sensation at the front of my head, just inside my skull, like someone had tied a piece of twine there and was just gently pulling at it and leading me like a dog on a leash. I stumbled along down the alley. Along the sidewalk. Across the street. Another street. Another couple blocks.

It was an apartment complex.

_< Come on, sonny. Almost there…>_

I followed the voice to a door marked 313, and as I raised a fist to knock, the door opened in front of me.

The man who was standing at the threshold was very unassuming. Middle-aged, maybe early fifties, with thinning hair and sunken eyes and a wrinkled complexion, paired with the ruddy nose of a drinker. He was wearing a slightly rumpled blazer on top of a lighter-colored shirt, and denim pants with boots that looked like they had steel toes. The only weird thing about him was that he was wearing what looked like rubber gloves, like the kind you might use when you clean a toilet.

“Get in here, kid. You’ve caused enough trouble out there already,” he said, and grasped my arm roughly in one hand, yanking me inside. It smelled of cigarette smoke and maybe marijuana, too. Some other unpleasant smells that barraged my senses that I didn’t know or didn’t want to know.

“Who…? How?” I mumbled, my head almost splitting in pain. I couldn’t hold back a slight whimper as he shoved his hand against my back to get me further into the rank apartment, the sudden movement making my head spin and split even further. “Water…”

“Here,” the man said, and locked the door behind me with more than just the standard-issue apartment lock. There must have been five different locks there. He leaned to grab a bottle of water from the cluttered table by the door and shoved it into my hands as he lumbered past me. My hands shook as I clumsily took off the cap, accidentally dropping it onto the stained carpet, chugging the contents of the bottle in one long gulp. God, it tasted so good. I needed more, but my head was still pounding and spinning, and I stumbled against the wall as I followed the mystery man further into his apartment.

“Who are you?” I asked, still clutching the empty bottle in my hands and wondering what I was supposed to do with it now. I looked around for a trash can or a recycling bin. There was a bin-less garbage bag with flies droning around the opening just inside the kitchen area, and I inferred that that must be the man’s trash receptacle.

“Name’s Winters. Jack Winters. An’ I’m a mutant, like you,” he said. I stopped in my tracks as I was about to drop the bottle into the garbage, swaying slightly. _Mutant._ I felt sick. Hearing someone else call me that just made it so real, and that terrified me. “Don’t you fuckin’ puke on my floor, you punk. Bathroom’s down the hall.” I responded with a vacant nod, languidly following Jack’s instructions to the tiny bathroom. It stank as bad as the rest of the apartment, if not worse, and it was about as clean, too. I didn’t think about it too much as I braced my hands on either side of the vanity sink and took deep, ragged breaths in and out.

It was all moving so fast.

_Mutant._

I’d only seen the word in the papers and in the news. Freaks. Accidents of nature. Accidents of God. God.

“Please, I know I haven’t been to church since I was little, but please, help me, God. Please. What am I doing here? Who am I? _What_ am I?” I mumbled through breaths, biting my lip. I was still so tired. But I also still had to pee. And drinking that bottle of water seemed to remind my body of that need, and so I went, and then I threw up most of the water I’d just had to drink, and then I washed my face with my eyes shut as tightly as I could scrunch them, and then I just drank from the dirty tap, lapping at the stream of water like a dog because I was too afraid to go back out to ask Jack for more.

God didn’t say anything back. Nate had probably been right. Just a fairytale for… for small minds. Stupid, Summers, stupid.

I knew Jack Winters was bad news. I knew I shouldn’t trust him. But he had taken me in. I didn’t have anyone else. I told myself as I stood in front of the sink and stared at my red-hued reflection that I wouldn’t lose myself. That I would be the son my mom and dad would have wanted me to be, even now that I was a mutant freak.

A loud, violent knock interrupted my introspection, followed by Winters’ voice.

“If you’re done pukin’, kid, come on out. Need t’ go over a few things, ya hear?”

I wiped my face again. Tried to fix my greasy, matted hair. Tried to arrange my clothes so that the rips and bloodstains weren’t so prominent, to little effect. And then I took a deep breath and came back out.

Jack was waiting for me in the tiny living room, sitting in a rickety wooden chair by the television. He jerked a thumb for me to sit in the couch, and by the looks of it, it had more than a few insect and/or parasite problems. I sat anyway.

“Listen up, sonny. I ain’t your friend. But I’m helpin’ you, so you owe me, you hear?” He paused, as if waiting for a response, and I blearily nodded. Head still hurt. Still hungry. Still so tired. “Good. Glad we’re on the same page. I’m gonna get you some clothes that don’t look like you went through a shredder, so tell me your sizes. While I’m doin’ that, you’re gonna sleep and grab whatever’s in the fridge to eat, and then when I get back, you an’ me are gonna split. Gotta get out of this city to somewhere the cops might not recognize ya on sight, see. I can change people’s thoughts. Sway ‘em. But I ain’t got the juice to hide you from their search after what you pulled. Nice goin’, by the way. Those lasers you shoot from your eyeballs. You’ve got a gift, boy.”

Gift. Right.

I told him my clothing sizes, and before he left me to eat and sleep, he got up from his chair and stood in front of me, looming over me like a monolith. I was as tall as him standing up, so it figured that he had to face me when I was sitting down to use that intimidation tactic.

“There’s nowhere else for you to go, boy. I own you. You do as I say, and you get to stay under my roof, no questions asked. If you ever snitch on me to anyone, I’ll snap your twiggy spine, you hear?”

My heart seemed to sink even further in my chest at his words. So Jack Winters was worse than I thought. Another bully, like at the orphanage, but this bully was holding all the cards. I didn’t have a choice.

“Yessir.”

“Good. I’m glad you have respect for your elders, sonny. You’ll go far,” Jack said, and his scowl morphed into something resembling a smile as he clapped a hand down on one of my shoulders, hard. I flinched. He was just like Nate. He left me alone in the apartment, then. I could still hear sirens every now and then from outside—probably looking for me even still. Getting up from the ratty couch, I went over to the kitchen and opened the fridge to find something to fill my stomach before passing out. Leftover pizza, slightly moldy. I ate it cold and slumped back into the couch cushions when I was done, a loose spring jabbing between my ribs as I curled up on my side. My long legs hung off the end of the loveseat, but it didn’t matter. For the first time in days, I had somewhere and someone. Someone who _wanted_ me, as twisted as his motivations might still be. I didn’t remember ever feeling wanted before.


	3. Jack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scott's life is miserable, courtesy of one of the worst people to enter his life.

The new clothes were itchy, but I didn’t say anything. Jack and I left Baltimore almost immediately upon his return—he ordered me to change into the new clothes, which already stank of cigarette smoke, so I did—and then we packed up what little Jack had and got out of the city. It was a couple day’s journey to our new home in Springfield, Illinois, during which time I got my strength back up. While we were at a pitstop in Ohio, we stayed at a crummy hotel with a major roach infestation. Jack got drunk and smoked a lot. He didn’t offer me anything. He never did—he gave me enough money for food, and I got it, and I didn’t want to know where he’d gotten it since it had become obvious he wasn’t gainfully employed.

I saw a school bus driving along beside our Greyhound the next day, and I wondered if I would ever be able to go back to school. Sure, school hadn’t been a cakewalk. The environment in my high school where all the orphanage kids were relegated to go wasn’t much better than the orphanage itself. People made fun of me for being tall and skinny. For my red-lensed glasses. Nate’s presence didn’t make it any better. I defended him, out of either instinct or habit, I don’t know—and his enemies became my enemies. But now that I was out of the orphanage and that high school, maybe I had a chance to start over?

No, that was stupid. Jack had already told me that school wasn’t an option anymore. They’d be looking for me. He’d shown me a missing persons poster with my face plastered on it. He’d told me that until he could scrounge up a source for a fake ID for me, I should think about what I wanted to look like. Haircut. Hairstyle. Different shades, though I told him that the lenses would have to be ruby-quartz.

Who knew being on the run was so… messy.

After the two days’ travel, we set up camp in an apartment that was all too much like the old one. Messy, stained, uncomfortable, smelly. But I was getting used to it.

Jack still hadn’t told me about why he wore the gloves, but he had told me that his mutant power was low-level mind manipulation and perception-altering. I wondered how much he’d used it on me since he’d taken me in. But did it matter? I was safe, relatively speaking. I had a roof over my head. I wasn’t starving or on the streets anymore. I owed him everything, and he reminded me of that fact every day.

Illinois was quiet, for the most part. We lived outside the city, in a bad part of town, but not so bad that it was noisy. I was thankful for that, at least.

During all of the moving and coming to terms with my new life as a mutant fugitive, I learned more about myself and my mutant power. Jack and I drove out to a secluded part of the state one day within the first week of our arrival in Springfield in a car that I knew had been stolen, and he told me to let loose with my eye beams.

“I-I can’t. What if—”

“Ain’t no one here, boy. Do it. I wanna see how this works. Don’t forget, you do as I say. And if there was a person there, you’d still do it, ya hear?”

I heard, but I didn’t listen. I just opened my eyes without my glasses on, and there was that _hiss-zap_ noise as the grassy ground before me tore up into crumbled earth and decimated rock. I closed my eyes almost immediately, but Jack protested.

“Keep it goin’ next time. You stop when I tell you to stop. Understand, kid?”

“Yessir.”

I opened my eyes again. The earth moved, parting before me like Moses and the Red Sea, and I stared out into the field. It felt… good. The pressure and pain behind my eyes—the headache I still had almost constantly—lessened as I kept up the beam. I tried over and over to turn it off without closing my eyes, but I couldn’t. It just kept going, and going. I must have stood there staring and blowing the ground a mile in front of me to bits for at least five minutes straight before Jack told me that it was enough and that I could put my glasses back on. I was almost reluctant to stop the beams, now. It was like having really satisfying stretch, feeling your muscles taught and tense and then relax the more you stretched.

“Put ‘em back on, boy.”

“Yessir.”

I did as I was told. I was good at following orders. I didn’t have to think, and I liked that a lot of the time. It was so much easier than letting myself sink into thought. So much less painful.

* * *

Jack had me cut my hair and dye it blonde. I looked like Alex. It was disconcerting. After that, he’d driven me to a seedy-looking residence where a man took my photo for my fake ID. My age was changed from fifteen to seventeen. My new birthday was March 11th. Along with the ID, Jack’s man had made up fake doctor’s papers for my “sensitive eye condition,” just in case. He still wouldn’t let me go to school, though, or get a job.

My place in our living situation was doing housework, for the most part. Jack wasn’t at the apartment much lately, and he wouldn’t tell me where he had been or where he was going the next day, and I was too afraid of his possible response to ask. I ordered us fast food and did the shopping. I cleaned up the apartment in the first week so that it looked better than how it had been when we’d arrived, though I couldn’t do much about the stains or the holes in the walls or the broken furniture. Everything else was gleaming. I’d put fresheners everywhere, but it still stank.

A week into our stay in Illinois, Jack took me along to wherever he’d been going for the past few days. We didn’t talk on the car ride there. We rarely talked, period. When we got there, Jack led me into the basement of the small house, where it smelled like mildew and rat droppings.

There was a small, rectangular table set up in the middle of one of the basement rooms down the cinderblock-lined hall, poorly-lit with a single bulb in the light fixture above. There were four chairs, and two were filled. In one, there was a woman with dark eyes and hair as light as my dyed hair. She was wearing casual business attire, and looked almost too neat and together to be among Jack and the other person seated at the table. The other person was a bulky man with tattoos on both bared shoulders and one on his neck that looked like some sort of gang symbol. His hair was buzzed, and his eyes were weirdly bright and pale, like hot coals set into his skull.

“Miriam, Vince, this here’s our secret weapon,” Jack said as he introduced me. I stepped forward hesitantly, nodding politely to the two but keeping my head down as I jammed my hands into my pockets. Their eyes were cold as they regarded me, sending chills up my spine. I didn’t like where this was going. “He’s the mutant kid I was telling you about. The Omaha boy with the optic blasts.”

“Laser-eyes here is our secret weapon? You’ve got to be joking. He’s a shrimp, and looks like a stiff. I’ll bet he hasn’t even shaken a vending machine to get a stuck drink,” the woman, Miriam, said. She kicked up her heeled boots onto the table and leaned her chair back onto the back two feet, chewing on a piece of gum and blowing a bubble. The pop of it bursting made me wince.

“He’ll do what I say, and that’s all we need here. Sit, Summers,” Jack said, and pushed me on the back between my shoulder blades hard enough to send me stumbling forward. I caught myself on the back of one of the empty chairs and sat between Miriam and Vince, hands kneading in my lap nervously. What was I doing? They were obviously up to no good. But what choice did I have?

“So spill to your little mutie kid, Jackie-boy. Haven’t got all day,” Vince said, his voice gravely and deep to match his tough appearance. Jack sat across from me, grinning his shark-toothed grin at me, the dim light accentuating his wrinkles and receding hairline.

“Scotty, boy… You’re gonna help us rob some folks.”

I looked up from my lap, my lips pursed. I knew this would be coming. My stomach twisted in my gut, and I felt my head start pounding with another headache.

“Yessir,” I said numbly, picking at the edges of my shirt under the table and not meeting his eyes. What else could I say? I was dead if I left. I had nowhere else to go. God, what could I do? I thought of my parents, and the promise I had made to myself and to their memory back in Baltimore. I wouldn’t lose myself… I wouldn’t ever use my power to hurt another person. I prayed that Jack wouldn’t put me into a position where I’d have to. But there was no god out there to hear me.

“There’s a facility near here. Works with unstable isotopes. Radioactive-type shit, science stuff. We’re gonna bust in and steal some. Big money for the right buyer, Scotty. And _you_ are gonna be our ace in the hole,” he told me, pointing a beefy index finger at me. I leaned back in my seat slightly at the gesture. “There are some thick containment walls inside, and your eye-blasts can blow right through ‘em! You’re a one-man wrecking machine, kid. And it’s gonna be simple. You just do as I say and follow me at all times, and you won’t have to worry about nothin’. Miriam and Vince’ll be handling security and the cams, so we’re the ones who’re gonna grab the loot. Any questions, boy?”

“No, sir.” I shook my head. My head hurt. Couldn’t quite think straight. Jack leaned back in his seat and folded his arms over his chest, nodding to me with a cocky grin on his face.

“See? Docile as a clam. Told ya he’d do anything we said. Don’t worry ‘bout him, anyway. He only needs someone to tell ‘im what to look at, and that’s what I’m here for. You two keep up your end, and I’ll keep up mine. Miriam, you got the buyer’s details? Rendezvous?”

“I have what we need for the time being. Buyer said that they’d sent a rendezvous location once we confirm that we actually have the goods. And Jack, I don’t trust this kid. Look at him. He’s shaking. You sure he’ll be able to do this?” She was right—I _was_ shaking. I tried to clamp it down as Vince chuckled beside me.

“Should be fun, either way,” he remarked, and Jack scowled.

“Like I said, you worry about your end, and I’ll worry about mine. Push comes to shove, I can always give ‘im a little mental nudge,” he said, smirking and tapping the side of his head with a gloved hand. I felt even more sick at the thought. I had to get out of this situation somehow. I had to. If not for myself, then for other people who could get hurt if they got in the way. I might have been a mutant freak now, but… I still cared about other people. Jack obviously didn’t feel the same way. I wondered if Miriam and Vince were mutants, too.

“Right… Well, then. I’ll see you bastards on Friday night. This goes well, drinks are on me, boys,” Miriam said, her voice like silk as she popped another gum bubble and pushed away from the table.

“You ever need help making sure your cute little protégé stays in line, just lemme know, Jack,” Vince said. “I could use the target practice.” He chuckled under his breath as he cracked his knuckles and then followed Miriam on her way out, tagging along close behind. I got the impression that Jack and I were the new ones on the roster—those two seemed like they’d worked together before. I started to look up from my lap to see if Jack wanted us to follow suit when I felt a hard shove on the crown of my head, pushing my face down towards the table.

My forehead was smacked against the wood hard, knocking my glasses askew. I grunted softly in pain as I lifted my head, keeping my eyes closed as I fixed my glasses, my hands shaking even more now. Jack was standing in front of his chair across the table from me, glaring down with his hands on his hips. He stepped around the table and grabbed me by my shirt collar, yanking me to my feet in front of him.

“That was just a taste, sonny. You’re mine, you hear? This job has a hell of a payday, and you are not gonna screw this up. Remember…”

 _< … I’m in your head.>_ I heard his statement finish like it was dropped into my mind, the same way as how he’d first lured me to him, and he shoved me back into the chair roughly. I almost fell backwards out of it, but managed to catch myself on the table, my head hurting on the inside and outside after striking my head.

“Y-yessir,” I murmured, putting a hand to my forehead and rubbing it. Ow. But I’d had worse at the orphanage. It wasn’t that different than what I’d grown used to—just… different. I didn’t cry.

“Hmph. Now come on, kid. We’re gonna go back to the apartment, and I’m gonna give ya a few more details about the place before Friday…”

* * *

I felt better than I’d been in a long time. I felt free. Walking down the city streets, the people didn’t give me any weird looks. I didn’t have my glasses. I didn’t need them. They smiled at me. People I was somehow familiar with waved at me as I went by, and I waved back. It was sunny out, and I looked up to see a _blue_ sky. Not red. Blue, and it was beautiful. I took a deep breath in, closing my eyes and savoring the clean, cool air as I turned the corner on the sidewalk.

“Heyo, Summers.”

I stopped in my tracks, my palms starting to sweat and my heart rate climbing as I came face to face with someone I never thought I’d see again.

“Toby…? Toby Rails? But you…”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s me. Surprised you remember your old orphan pal, even after everything,” he said, spreading his arms and giving me a nod. I could only stare.

“But you…”

“Shit, Summers. You’re still as dense as ever. Yeah, I died. _You_ killed me, remember? You let me go.” Toby stepped forward, and I stepped back. A car went by on the street right behind me, the breeze from its passing making my hair get in my eyes. I pushed it aside.

“But I was trying to save you, I swear! I tried to hold on! You wouldn’t… you wouldn’t help me save you!” I protested, my insides twisting up into knots. He took another step towards me, getting closer.

“You let me go, Scotty. You let me go, and it’s all your fault. You just couldn’t hold on, could you?” He narrowed his eyes at me, scowling. “You. Let. Me. Go.”

And suddenly it wasn’t Toby from the orphanage standing a meter in front of me. It was Alex.

“How could you let me go, Scott?”

“I-I didn’t let you go! I held on! I saved you, Alex, you’re alive!” I sank to my knees to face my little brother—as I remembered him, when I’d last seen him. That had been when he was just six years old. On the plane. That damned plane. I never wanted to fly again, but the sky still called to me. I reached out for his hands, but he yanked away before I could take them.

“You let me go!”

“No! I didn’t!” I pleaded with him, but he only backed away, tears in his eyes. “You have a family again, Alex! You’re okay!”

We were in the parachute. I was holding onto him. He was pulling away, like Toby had. I couldn’t hold on. I was losing my grip. “Alex, no! Hang on!”

“It’s all your fault, Scott. It’s all your fault.”

He slipped from my arms.

I watched as my brother plummeted towards the ground.

“NO!”

I saw red, and he was gone.

I was standing on the edge of the roof where Toby had jumped, where I couldn’t hold onto him, and there was his broken form several stories below. Only it wasn’t him, it was my little brother. I retched, turning away, stumbling against a peak in the roofing as tears stung my eyes.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” I mumbled, over and over, under my breath. There was a hand on my shoulder. I looked up and saw my mother, with my father at her side.

“Scott—”

I saw red again, and I screamed as I felt the pressure build in my eyes and stream forth with that blasted noise and I watched them disintegrate in front of my eyes and I couldn’t save them and I couldn’t save Toby and I lost everyone and I was on my knees and then I was falling and it was all red and the crane was falling and I couldn’t do anything as people fell before my eyes over and over and over and—

* * *

“Gah!” I sat up with a yell, sweaty and panting as I fumbled for my glasses with shaking fingers. I slid them onto my nose, taking shuddering breaths as I let my head rest between my hands, my forehead still throbbing from when Jack had slammed it into the table. I had another migraine now, too.

Oh, thank god. It had only been a nightmare. I hadn’t killed anyone, yet. Alex was fine. Toby… was not. My parents were not. God, help me. It was a good thing Alex had gotten away while he had. If he’d stayed, I’d only have brought more misfortune on him. I seemed to do that with anyone who ever came near me. Including myself.

I wiped the sweat from my face with the back of my hand, blinking hard, trying to wash the images from my mind. I’d gotten used to nightmares—I don’t remember a time when I hadn’t had them every night—but this was the first time I’d dreamt that I’d killed people with my optic blasts.

If I’d been able to blow away a fucking crane, what could happen if I looked at a person for even a second? A fraction of a second?

I hugged my arms around myself, rocking back and forth on my air mattress in the apartment, trying to steady my breathing with the techniques Robyn had taught me before she changed.

“Alex is fine. Alex is fine. Alex…”

Alex. Oh, he was _fine,_ and here I was under the wing of a career criminal, about to become one myself. I was a mutie freak with fucking _lasers_ or some shit coming out of my eyeballs, and Alex had a _home._ Someone had wanted him for him, not for any power he had. I bit my lip and lowered my head, letting my hands fall. My hair still felt weird after getting it cut so short. It hadn’t been that short in a while.

I hated my brother, sometimes. Resented him. Those feelings were short-lived, and I was always guilty afterwards. I should be happy for him, not pissed that his luck was better than mine. But here and now? I was stuck. There was only one real way out, and even though I thought about it a lot, I was too much of a coward to consider it. I couldn’t become another Toby. I couldn’t… And I couldn’t bear to have Alex hear that his big brother committed suicide from one of those government drones they send to tell kids bad news. I couldn’t do that to him, even if I did hate him sometimes.

My breathing steadied after a few minutes, but I couldn’t go back to sleep. I checked my watch in the darkness. It was past two in the morning. Sighing, I rolled out of bed and made my way to the kitchen for a snack, feeling my way through the tiny, pitch black apartment by letting my fingers trail on the walls. One hand bumped something, and that something went scuttling over my knuckles. Making a soft sound of disgust, I flicked my wrist to dislodge the cockroach, continuing on. I’d gotten used to them.

I opened the refrigerator when I arrived in the kitchen, letting the hard light from the bulb inside fall on the countertop behind me and illuminate my surroundings. I grabbed the other half of the sandwich I’d made for dinner—I hadn’t been hungry enough to finish it earlier—and sat at the card table that was our dining table, leaving the fridge door open to light the room as I ate. Any more light, and I might wake Jack, who slept with his door open. I’d disturbed him once when I woke up screaming from another nightmare of the plane crash. He’d hit me, and grabbed my hair, and told me to “shut the fuck up” before I raised someone else’s attention.

I’d gotten better about waking up from the nightmares in my orphanage days, but every now and then, I couldn’t control it.

The sandwich was soggy, but I didn’t care too much. I liked it better than the constant stream of fast food Jack and I were eating ninety percent of the time, and I still couldn’t cook worth a damn, so sandwiches it was.

As the fridge started to hum and try and make up for all the cold air I was letting out of it by keeping it open, I pulled the newspaper Jack had left on the table towards me, scanning the headlines.

_“Fall Fashion: Ladies’ Edition.”_

_“Robert Kelly of New York Announces Senator Bid.”_

_“Mutants: Fact or Fiction? House left in flames leaves more questions than answers.”_

_“Defending Christianity in the Time of Technology.”_

I flipped to the article on mutants, absently reaching up to adjust my glasses as I squinted at the page. In the dim light of the fridge, it was hard to make out the small type. The article read about a family killed in a house fire, with the remains of all but the family’s teenage son found in the aftermath. There’d been no sign of him at all, and rumors had started in his small town about him being a mutant. Stories about how he’d lit fires with his friends without a match or a lighter.

_“With evidence inconclusive, no one truly knows what happened at that ill-fated house. Officials have sent out an APB for the missing teenager, but so far there have been no signs of the boy. This case resembles a similar, though less deadly, event a couple weeks ago in Omaha, Nebraska, where a construction crane was felled and then completely disintegrated by another teenage boy with ‘laser eyes.’ Both of these incidents are on top of years of speculation in the scientific community about the evolution of humanity and the possibility of super-humans as anomalies in the genetic chain. Some believe that in the age of the atom bomb and atomic energy, something has influenced the human genome and caused these ‘mutants’ to develop._

_“One such researcher and geneticist is Doctor Charles Xavier, who puts forth that this evolution might be in part caused by the atomic age, but also might have been happening already, with nuclear power and weaponry merely expediting the process of evolution. Other sources, including popular televangelist William Stryker, believe that mutants are a sign from God that the end times are approaching, and that these dangerous mutants must be agents of the Devil._

_“Science or religion, the fact remains that these so-called ‘mutant’ incidents have become more common in recent years, and there is already a distinct paranoia among the general populace. How can you tell if your child will become one of these mutants? How will super-powered individuals be controlled if they can incinerate an entire house with a thought? The mutant question looms, and as more reports of mutant activity come in, the United States as a country will have to decide its course of action regarding these problematic individuals.”_

I pushed the paper back, folding it up again as I stood from the folding chair at the table. We weren’t going to be able to hide for that much longer, were we? Mutants. Jack. Me. This kid in the article had killed his family, probably. Accidental or not, he’d _killed._ He was a _murderer._ If I stayed with Jack, would I become a killer, too? Would I have any choice? I couldn’t even control my power. If circumstances had been different when my power had manifested, like they had with this other kid, I could have killed so many people. I could have been a murderer already.

I suddenly felt like throwing up my sandwich.

“Rein it in, Summers…” I murmured, closing my eyes and breathing deeply. I needed to let loose again soon. The headaches were getting more than what the painkillers Jack had gotten for me could handle. I took some of the pills on my way out of the kitchen and down the hall to my room, padding along on my bare feet as I felt my way back. There was a _crunch_ underfoot, and I sighed as I wiped my toes against the doorframe of my room to get the bits of crushed cockroach off before collapsing onto my air mattress again. Lovely.

I lay back with my arms crossed behind my head, glasses still on. I didn’t want to take them off anymore. What if I accidentally opened my eyes in my sleep? I needed to remind Jack about getting me new ones, too. I wasn’t looking forward to that. He was a man of few words and many fists.

Closing my eyes, I thought of my parents as I dozed off for the second time that night.


	4. Crime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The heist goes wrong.

“We’re here. Summers, with me. Miriam, Vince, you two handle the cams and the security. We’ll be taking the backdoor,” Jack said as the car rolled to a stop in the woods. I was sitting in the back with Miriam, who side-eyed me and popped a gum bubble lazily.

“We know our jobs. Just make sure your little laser gun here knows his,” she said, and slipped out the door. Vince, who’d been in the passenger seat up front, followed her. I watched them disappear into the darkness. I could barely make out anything that was more than a couple meters away at this late hour.

“Alright, sonny. This is it. Time to prove you’re worth, eh?” Jack chuckled to himself as he kicked the car into gear and drove us further through the woods, off-roading it. He had the headlights off, so I couldn’t see worth anything. I didn’t know how he could even sort it out with normal vision. Nevertheless, a couple minutes later, we were parked near the far side of the nuclear research site, and we both got out of the car. It was chilly, and I shivered, keeping my arms hugged around my body as I followed Jack.

“Coming around now on foot. Miriam, update,” Jack said into a walkie-talkie as we darted through the woods towards the facility. I had to keep close behind Jack, mirroring his movements, to avoid getting lost or running straight into a tree. My heart was racing. Everything about this situation felt so _wrong._

As Jack got his update from Miriam and led on through the forest, I was barely listening. I was just along for the ride. A portable laser gun. That’s all I was. But at least I wasn’t alone.

“C’mon, kid. Almost to the fence. Security’s down and the patrol is taken care of,” Jack said, gesturing me to hurry up. I did. We made it to the edge of the facility, where I could finally see again from the stark lighting of the poles set up in set increments along the tall, barbed-wire-topped fence. Jack grabbed my upper arm roughly and shoved me towards it, almost so that I went stumbling into the chain link. “Now bust through. Small burst.”

_Small burst?_ He knew I could hardly control this power. Small burst. I let out an anxious breath and tried to keep my hand from shaking as I reached up for my glasses, tilting them up as I closed my eyes. And then I blinked. There was hardly any sound from my eyes as the beams burst forth, given the short amount of time they were open, but the fence made a terrific, _creak-CRASH_ noise as the chain link was torn apart in front of me, hurled back into the closest wall of the actual building and cracking the concrete. I felt a little light-headed, but I couldn’t deny that even releasing a bit of my power like that was weirdly satisfying.

The feeling of satisfaction vanished as soon as it manifested as I remembered just how destructive I had been with a damn _blink_ of my eyes, and my feeling of fear returned as Jack grabbed my arm again with a hand that felt like solid rock through the glove, yanking me through the ruined fence.

“Well done, kid. Perfect.”

I supposed it had been Miriam and/or Vince who’d disabled the alarms presumably attached to the fence, and made it so that they couldn’t be tripped by the security guards by hand after the ruckus I’d made. Even so, it wouldn’t be long before one of the guards, either on the inside or outside, called the police.

Jack led me around the building a bit further, until we arrived in a little niche in the wall of the facility where a large metal door was located.

“Look, you even have yourself a target, Summers. Blow it to hell.”

“But what if someone is behind—”

“Do as I say, boy. _Now._ ” I heard the click of a gun, but when I looked at Jack, he wasn’t aiming it at me. He was readying it at his side in preparation for entering through the busted door. I could take him out with a look. I could blink at him without my glasses and he’d be… he’d probably be dead, maybe. I didn’t know exactly how my power worked. But I’d have nowhere to go and the cops were probably already on their way and what could I do but—

_ZZAAK-BLAM!_

I let out a shuddering breath, my whole body shaking as I desperately ran forward ahead of Jack before he could stop me, checking the rubble where the door had been for any casualties.

_Please, please._

I didn’t see anyone, but I didn’t have time to make sure as Jack growled and grabbed me again with his free hand, his gun in his other. He pulled me along, and I couldn’t find the words to protest.

“You follow _me,_ kid. Don’t you fuckin’ forget it,” he said, his grip tightening on my arm. I winced, and then gritted my teeth in pain as his fingers seemed to crush my muscle against my bone. How the hell was he that strong? It felt like a hydraulic press had just come down on my arm. His mutation was only mind-powers, right?

I stayed silent as he led us through the halls, only lit by dim emergency lighting. Still, it was enough for me to get by, and as we went along, Jack released me and let me follow on my own again. He called for another update from Miriam, and she said something about the cops being inbound. We were running out of time. Oh, god. If I was caught. What would happen to me?

“Get this open,” Jack ordered, and I almost bumped into Jack as he stopped in front of me and pointed his gun at a door. I did as I was told. The door was slammed clear across the huge room that opened up before us. I was still trembling as I followed Jack inside, carefully picking my way over the rubble from the doorframe, scared out of my mind. But I didn’t have a headache. My head was clear, except for the fact that my thoughts were racing and my world was only falling further apart by the minute.

Jack led me to another door, and then another. We left a trail of destruction in our wake. It looked like a team of demolitionists had come through, not two people with only one firearm between them. Finally, Jack slowed to a stop in front of what appeared to be the biggest door I’d ever seen in my life. It must have been about 10x10 feet, and who knew how thick. All made of metal.

“Ah, at last. Almost there, sonny. You knock this one down, we’re practically home free. Let’s see red.” He grinned and pushed me forward, and I stood there in front of the door for a moment, hesitating. For too long, apparently. I felt one of Jack’s hands slam into my back, and I let out an _“Uff!”_ of both surprise and pain, stumbling forward a couple steps. Shaking my head clear, I raised a hand to my glasses, and then I opened my eyes.

I stared at the huge door for only slightly longer than the single blink I’d used with all the smaller ones, but maybe that had been too much. The door ripped from its hinges with an ear-splitting crash and the screech of metal-on-metal, hurtling through the adjacent room and slamming into the back wall with enough force to shake the building and crack the concrete significantly. Jack came up behind me and patted me on the back in the same place he’d just hit me—patting a little too hard. It hurt.

“Ha! There we go! _This_ is what I’m talkin’ about, boy! Now get out of the way and watch the door. Anyone comes runnin’, you blast ‘em. Non-negotiable,” he said, and before I could even open my mouth to protest, he turned and walked into the room, broken floor tiles crunching and clinking under his feet. I watched blankly as he started fiddling with some big machine set into the left wall, before he yelled at me, “Get out there _now,_ Summers! NOW!”

I flinched and turned aside, standing in the doorframe as I peered left and right down the hallway through which we’d entered. No one, thank goodness. Yet.

Shouting, from down the hall. I tensed and fiddled with the hem of my dark shirt with one hand, the other going to my glasses.

_Please don’t make me kill anyone. Please don’t make me kill anyone._

I checked back over my shoulder for Jack. He was still working. I heard gunshots and more shouting. Miriam or Vince, maybe? The sound of the guns firing echoed around me, making it hard to tell how far away the noise was. I’d never heard a real gun before, or seen one fire firsthand. I didn’t like it. Every instinct in my body was telling me to run. Just _run._ I’d run before. I could do it again… And probably die of starvation, dehydration, or exposure before I could find another safe haven. And Jack _needed_ me. Even though I hated him and feared him, I couldn’t just leave him. He could die in the shootout, and it would be my fault.

Damn it. Were these even my thoughts, or was Jack manipulating my mind? I bit my lip and then swallowed. The guns were definitely getting closer now. I couldn’t face a fight. Not one like this. Give me fists and feet any day, but this…? I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t risk hurting anyone, or killing anyone.

So I tilted up my glasses and opened my eyes.

The ceiling crashed and crumbled to the floor with a burst of red in the hallway where we’d come in, and the gunshots seemed to cease for a moment before starting back up again. I hadn’t heard any sirens approaching because of how deep inside the building we were, but it was safe to say that whoever was fighting in that hallway had more firepower than a few security guards.

“What the fuck did you _DO?!”_

I cried out as my head seemed to split open in one of my headaches, the voice of Jack Winters slicing into my brain in a psychic bolt as well as through my ears as he yelled the same words aloud. My hands went to my head as I bent over, leaning on the ragged edge of the doorframe as the psychic attack’s effects ebbed. He’d never done that to me before. Not like that.

Jack seemed to have gotten what he came for as he stomped towards me and then wheeled me around towards him with one hand, the other hand slinging the bag he’d brought to hold the stolen item over his shoulder. Once the bag was over his shoulder and the headache was going away, he balled his now-free hand into a fist and slugged me across the face. Hard.

I couldn’t tell if he’d broken something or not, but it hurt as much as if he had as I went reeling, my glasses cracking and breaking and falling to the floor with the punch. My back was pressed against the remains doorframe, and I felt something slice into my skin through my shirt.

“Dammit! You idiot! Look what you made me do, you fuckin’ sonuvabitch!”

I didn’t cry. Not on purpose. But tears leaked from my eyes from the shock and the suddenness of the pain and the sheer amount of it—I’d been clocked the same way more times than I could count back at the orphanage, but Jack’s punch had felt like someone had thrown a brick at my face—and I knew he saw the tears.

“ ‘m sorry—”

“Shut up! Miriam an’ Vince are prob’ly gonna be dead because of you, you fuckin’ moron! And I don’t like those two none, but they work for someone else who’ll have _my_ head if they’re collateral. Dammit. Shit. Ain’t got time to waste. Now come on! You took out our exit, so you’ve gotta make a new one. Lucky for us, I memorized the damn schematics of this place,” Jack said, his voice edged with a dangerous tone I had never heard before. If he didn’t need me to break through, I knew that he’d have killed me right then.

The gunshots had stopped.

Jack grabbed me and hauled me with him, being my eyes since I couldn’t see without my glasses. My face hurt. Putting a gloved hand to it, I winced at the touch.

“Open your eyes.”

I didn’t have a choice. I did. It was a locked door. It wasn’t locked after I looked at it for a split second. We ran. I could hear the sirens now. Shit, what if they had choppers? We’d made an awful lot of noise. How long had it been? How long had it taken for the cops to arrive en masse? I couldn’t check my watch anymore.

Jack dragged me along, directing me to open my eyes every now and then.

_Please, don’t let a person be there._

I would never know what I was facing until I saw it. Until I blew it straight to hell with a glance. It was terrifying. I was reminded of my nightmare—what if I opened my eyes and it was Alex standing there, or my parents?

_Shut up, shut up. Don’t be stupid._ Alright, maybe not _them._

“Blast this and we’re home free.”

A wall.

_HSZZAAAKKT._

No wall.

We were out in the open now, and I silently thanked God, or fate, or whatever was out there for there not being a helicopter yet. No one had seen us. We must have been on the other side of the building—unfortunately, this also meant that it was a further run to our getaway vehicle.

“C’mon, you stupid kid,” Jack hissed, his grip tightening around my arm. The same one he’d almost crushed earlier. I tripped after him as we ran. “Blast the fence.”

So we weren’t quite as “home free” as he’d said—not yet. I opened my eyes for an instant, and this time the fence was blasted outward towards the tree line. I heard shouting and the sirens of police vehicles in the near distance—they’d be after us in an instant after hearing that.

I ran.

My face hurt. My arm hurt. My back hurt. I couldn’t see. It was hell. Maybe I deserved it. I’d lost my parents, hadn’t I? Lost Alex. Lost Toby. Lost my humanity.

I knew what the word “mutant” meant. It wasn’t in the article I’d read from before, but it would be in future articles.

_Monster._

We made it to the car in the woods, somehow, and Jack shoved me into the passenger seat. He plunked whatever he’d stolen into my lap. It was heavy. The car started up, and then Jack gunned it through the trees. I buckled my seatbelt and held on. I felt sick. I wanted to disappear.

Maybe running away _would_ be better. Maybe I was better off dead. Alex would be better off without a monster as a brother, anyway.

* * *

“We’re not going back to the—”

“No, we ain’t goin’ back to the apartment. We’re gettin’ the hell out of Dodge. The buyer who was ‘sposed to pay for this stuff? Who Miriam and Vince worked for? They ain’t ones for messin’ around. We stick around, they find us, we’re dead. So we’re runnin’. No thanks to you, you fuckin’ jackass. If you’d helped my team with those damn cops back there, we wouldn’t be in this mess,” Jack said, cutting me off. Talking hurt. My cheek hurt. I still couldn’t see, and I wondered if Jack would ever get me new glasses. Being blind made me depend on him. How could I run when I couldn’t even walk without his help?

“I’m sorry…” I said softly, wincing in pain. Wincing made it worse. Maybe he had broken my cheekbone. I hoped it was just a bad bruise. What was with this man’s hands? They were like iron, or stone. I’d never seen his hands without the gloves. Maybe they _were_ iron or stone _._

“Sorry ain’t gonna cut it, punk. You ruined everything, and when we find someplace t’ stop, you are gonna regret what you did.”

I was silent. But I didn’t cry. I didn’t even know if I was scared of his threats anymore. I just felt empty.

We must have driven for hours. Night turned into day—the only reason I could tell was because of the light that leaked through my closed eyelids. What we’d stolen was heavy in my lap. What the hell had been worth that? And had I… _killed_ Miriam and Vince through my inaction? Maybe I could have done something better. I’d screwed up. Maybe I could have gotten closer to the fight and trashed the ceiling when they were with us, instead of cutting it off before it could even reach me. Oh, god. They were dead and it was my fault.

We stopped, and Jack got out of the car. He didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. He slammed his door shut behind him. I just waited. My stomach growled.

If we weren’t going back to the apartment, that meant we’d have to get new documents and IDs. New identities, again. Who would I be this time? How old would I be? I wrung my hands in my lap where they rested on top of the bag that held the heavy object.

It sunk in then that I was officially a criminal. It hadn’t been an accident this time. I’d been an accessory. Technically a willing one, too. I could have run, but I hadn’t. What sort of person was I becoming? Maybe I’d already broken my promise to myself and to my parents. What would they have me do in this situation? I didn’t know. It had been years. I couldn’t quite remember either of their faces. Flashes of color, but nothing else. Words. Impressions.

I slumped back in my seat as I waited, wondering where we were. The emptiness in my gut vanished and was replaced with fear when I remembered what Jack had said about making me regret what I did. I sat up again, my heart pounding. I’d been expecting a beating. That, I could take. But… Had he… abandoned me here? What if he had gone and left me in the car in the middle of nowhere? What if—no, no. I still had the stolen goods. He’d come back for that. I let out a breath and sank back into the old leather.

“Hold it together, Summers,” I muttered to myself.

* * *

“Hold it together, Summers.” Nate was sitting cross-legged on his bunk across from my own in our room, resting his head on one hand and his elbow on his knee as he gazed at me with those dark, disinterested eyes. “You’re not special. All of us are orphans here. Get used to it or just kill yourself like Toby did.”

“Stop it,” I muttered, turning over in my bed to face the wall instead of looking at my roommate—and the closest thing I had to a friend in this place.

“Just sayin’, Scotty. If you can’t make the cut… Might as well make your own cuts.”

“I said, stop it.” I curled up on my side, clutching my pillow as I cried quietly. Noiseless tears. Couldn’t let him see that. He’d eat me alive. I heard him shift on his bed, and then he chuckled drily. Something thunked against the wall—then against skin, then the wall again. He was tossing around that tennis ball again. It annoyed me to no end, and he knew it.

“What, too much of a baby to handle the heat, Summers? I know you’re crying over there, you pussy.”

“Stop.”

“Nah. I can play you like a fiddle, you know. You’re so easy. All compassion and that typical teenage torment and angst. So passé. So _boring_ and predictable. I was hoping you’d be more interesting. Maybe your kid brother is more interesting. Hm.” I didn’t know what he was talking about when he got like this. His words stung—they always did, and I’d always assumed it was because he was like some of the other boys here, deflecting the pain of abandonment out and attacking others to make up for the sense of loss. Instead of attacking with his fists, he attacked with his words. I didn’t know which was worse. As for me, I was of the stock of orphan kid who just internalized it all. “Hey. You listenin’ to me?” Another shift of his bed, and the ball stopped hitting the wall. I heard him walk over to my bed and felt him perch on the opposite edge. I could hear him breathing. Felt it, as he leaned over my neck.

“Hey, Mr. Summers… Don’t ignore me…”

“Just leave me alone.”

“Oh, boo-hoo. Toby had it coming to him. Can’t you see that? Or are your eyes too _sensitive?_ ” He moved away for a moment, and I heard a soft _click_ as he picked up my glasses from my side table, and presumably put them on. “Look at me, I’m Scotty Summers and I couldn’t save my bestest friend—oops, sorry, bestest bully—Toby Rails from his untimely demise at the dastardly hands of the pavement outside the State Home! Oh, woe is me!” He dropped my glasses in front of my face on the bed, leaning over me again. I reached out and put them on. I was getting another headache. Maybe it was just the present company’s influence. “Ah, that’s better, hm? Now people can’t see you cry!”

“Get off my bed, Nate.”

“Nah. Anyway, it’s been _weeks_ since that nobody offed himself. Why the hell are you still so upset? You should be _glad_ he’s dead. He must have given you half the shiners you’ve racked up here, man,” Nate droned on, suddenly leaning his weight against my back and using me like a makeshift lounge chair. I flinched at the contact and sat up to move away, but Nate caught my wrist in his surprisingly strong grip, grinning as he tilted his head and met my eyes through the ruby quartz glasses. “Am I making you uncomfortable?”

“I said leave me alone,” I said, sniffing to avoid dripping snot and then wiping my face of the last of my drying tears with the back of my free hand. Nate made a mock pout, blinking his eyes at me.

“Aw… is wittle Scotty still upset? Am I making you sad, wittle boy?” I tried to ignore his taunts. “Or are you _angwy?_ When will you finally break, huh, Scotty? When will you throw a punch at the only person in this place who gives you the time of day? Oh, speaking of which, it’s 4:32 in the afternoon. You’re welcome!”

I scowled and twisted out of his grip, sliding past him to get off the bed. I wanted to hit him so badly. But whenever the urge seemed irresistible, when I was about to pull my arm back for a swing, I just froze up. I couldn’t lay a finger on him. And maybe that was a good thing. Better I don’t isolate myself any further. No one else in this place said a word to me unless it was an insult. Nate was full of the insults, too—I’d gotten used to most of them, except when I was in a headspace like the one I was in now—but he’d also just talk to me about random stuff. Life. The other kids at the State Home for Foundlings. Schoolwork. He’d even helped tutor me in my tougher classes. It’s not like he was _evil._ He was just a kid, after all.

So as I got up from my bed and stretched and tried to clamp down on my emotions, trying to fix the mask I had to wear for everyone else and for myself to survive here, I didn’t touch him. Didn’t push him off my bed. He was smaller than me. Younger. I could hurt him. But even if I could, I felt like he would just laugh. I didn’t like his laugh. He never laughed about funny things—only twisted or mean things.

“Good boy, Summers. See? Now you’ve got the hang of it. Control, eh? Something you’ll always need to work on…”


	5. Punishment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack takes things out on Scott, and they keep running.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard the driver’s side door open about an hour later. It was getting cold in the car.

“Who’s there?”

“Guess who, sonny,” Jack said with a grunt as he settled back into his seat. Apparently my punishment “when we stop” didn’t mean here. “Takin’ care of a few things. Now shut up and stay shut up. Gonna be driving for another couple hours. You don’t have to piss, do you? You piss in my car, you’re even deader than you already are, boy.” I shook my head. I didn’t. I did before, but my body seemed to have forgotten about it for the time being, and I didn’t want to have Jack having to guide me over to a suitable place with my current lack of vision. No, I could hold it. “Good.”

The car rumbled along on the road for a while. The sun grew brighter against my eyelids, then dimmer again—not enough time had passed for it to be nighttime, so it must have been clouds. I was hungry, and thirsty. I was reminded of my time on the run alone, and I wondered if I would be in that situation again soon, only blinded and unable to even walk in a straight line without decimating everything a mile in front of me. We finally stopped again, and this time as Jack let out a heavy sigh, I felt like we’d reached our destination for the time being. He got out of the car, and this time he came around to my side and opened the door.

“C’mon, boy,” he muttered, grabbing the bag of goods from my lap and then gripping me by the arm as I unbuckled my seatbelt and disentangled myself from it, hauling me out of the car. He locked it behind us and pulled me along. “Stairs.”

We climbed a couple flights of outdoor stairs, and then we went down an open-air hallway of some sort before stopping. I heard the clicking of a key in a lock, and Jack guided me roughly through the door and into what I now surmised was either a hotel room or apartment. He led me along for a few more steps before shoving me so hard in the chest I had to sit down—thankfully, a couch was there to catch me. It smelled like old cigarette smoke in this place. Nothing new, but still, disappointing. Just for once, I’d like to live somewhere with clean air, though that was fairly unlikely with Jack’s smoking habit.

I was sitting up in the couch, trying to adjust myself, when the first punch came. I didn’t have time to cry out before the second one hit, then the third. I was on the floor. The punches changed to kicks, and it was hard to tell which was more painful—Jack’s fists were like getting hit with bricks, but his kicks had more force behind them. It was easier than I thought to keep my eyes squeezed shut as I weathered the abuse. It hurt. Bad. But again, nothing I hadn’t faced before. A group of angry boys was just as bad as one angry adult man, if not worse.

“This is what—”

A kick to my ribs.

“—you get—”

A kick to my gut.

“—for bein’—”

He grabbed my shirt collar and yanked me up towards his face. Cigarette breath puffed against my eyelids. I could end it right here for him. Open my eyes and blow his head clean off—but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

“—a stupid, good for nothin’ pussy with shit for brains!”

He slugged me across the other cheek. I tasted blood. Everything hurt, but it didn’t. I’d gotten so used to tuning out the pain whenever I was in situations like this. But this time, I couldn’t fight back like I could at the orphanage. I fought, and he abandoned me, or killed me, and abandonment here would be the same as killing me.

Jack spat more insults at me as he dropped me to the floor, kicking me one last time before stomping away. I was curled up on the smoke-scented carpeting, hugging my bruised arms to my chest and not making a sound. I hadn’t screamed. I’d hardly made any noise at all. I wondered if Nate would have approved. Probably not—he’d have told me to blast Jack to dust on principle, probably. Why did I even care what he approved of, though? I couldn’t keep him out of my head, even now.

I don’t know how long I stayed there, and I must have passed out from either exhaustion or pain or both, because I woke up and really had to go to the bathroom.

“J-Jack?” I called. God, what was that? My voice cracked and squeaked. I cleared my throat. “Jack?” Nothing. If he was abandoning me here… Well. At least it was a hotel or an apartment. There had to be a bathroom somewhere, right? With no response, I slowly got to my feet with a groan, my battered and bruised body protesting at every movement. Only a few weeks since I’d earned the name “mutant” and I’d already been knocked around twice. My future wasn’t looking terribly promising. Then again, it hadn’t looked promising since the plane crash. Since my world went to hell and everything I saw since was as red as the flames.

I limped around, feeling the walls for a bathroom door like I’d grown used to doing in the dark back in our Illinois apartment at night. Finally, I found it. Didn’t bother with the lights. On my way out, I paused by the sink and splashed water on my face, sighing and then grimacing as the water fell against the split skin on my cheek and forehead. Who knew how much of a mess I looked now? At least I’d been wearing black for Jack’s job. Couldn’t see any blood on black. I hoped Jack would come back, and come back with new glasses. I didn’t want to rely on that man to clean me up. Thankfully, I thought, if he _did_ come back, I doubted he’d want to tend to me like a newborn baby, either.

Feeling my way back to the couch, I sat, and the pain of my beatdown felt more profound after a few minutes, as well as the gnawing pain of my stomach as it growled at me to feed it. I lay on my side and tucked my hands by my head as I tried to catch a few moments of shut-eye. Might as well. God knew Jack would have me up in a heartbeat when he came back. If he came back.

_Please come back._

_Don’t leave me._

_I’m sorry._

* * *

“Get up, you lazy sack of shit. And put these on,” Jack said. I woke up at the words, spoken close beside me, and something was tossed against my side as I lay there on the couch. A glasses case. I sat up.

“Are these—?”

“Ruby quartz. I’m not an idiot. Unlike you, boy. Put ‘em on and pull your weight. You’re lucky I might still need you, or you’d have eaten a bullet out back by now,” he said. I opened the case and took out the pair of glasses—the second new pair I’d had since first being prescribed them. But where had be gotten them? Didn’t matter, and I doubt he’d even tell me if I’d asked. I slipped them over my face, the little pads resting against the bridge of my nose, and then I put my hands over my eyes as I opened them slowly, just in case they weren’t the ruby quartz that seemed to be the only thing that could hold back my optic blasts. There was a slight tingle, then a sort of settling, and the glasses held. Oh, thank god. Thank god.

“Thank you, sir,” I said meekly, taking my hands away from my eyes and finally looking up and around at my surroundings. Jack was looming over me in more casual clothes than his previous attire—a pale tank top and jeans, but still with those weird gloves on. A cigar, not a cigarette, dangled from his lips as he folded his arms over his chest and glared down at me.

“Yeah, you’d better thank me, you insufferable whelp. Now get up and clean up. Clothes in the bathroom. Stayin’ here a couple days and takin’ care of some business. You don’t leave this hotel room, got it, freak?” I nodded, the movement painful. I felt like one big bruise. Probably best I stayed here anyway instead of going out in public. Weird red shades aside, I probably looked like a mugging victim. People would ask questions. Or maybe they wouldn’t. I didn’t even know where we were, and I wasn’t about to ask Jack.

I followed Jack’s instructions and went to the bathroom again, this time able to see through red-tinted lenses where I was going. The hotel wasn’t terrible. I’d only seen a few bugs so far, and there were far fewer stains and dented walls than our previous lodgings. All in all, pretty decent. The mirror was cracked in the bathroom, but it didn’t matter. I stared at my reflection. I was a mess.

I could see the edge of a black eye peeking out from behind my glasses. My nose was bloody. I hadn’t even noticed—the smell of cigarette and now cigar smoke had distracted me from the wet-iron smell of my own blood. The skin on my forehead and cheek had split open. I hadn’t even looked at the rest of me. This was just great.

Jack had left a rudimentary first-aid kit along with the pile of clothes, and I used a few butterfly bandages to deal with the split skin and cleaned up the rest of my more serious injuries before even taking off my shirt. When I finally did, wincing as I pulled it over my head with my eyes shut in case my glasses were dislodged, my torso hadn’t fared that much better.

But I’d watched the orphanage nurse when she used to patch me up after the fights there. I knew how to take care of myself now, if given the appropriate supplies. It was almost meditative. If I wasn’t a mutant now, maybe I could have been a nurse. I certainly wouldn’t ever be the pilot my dad had been, not with my brain damage and my headaches and my red glasses. Now… I couldn’t be anything but a monster.

The new clothes were a couple sizes too big and hung loosely on my lanky frame, the t-shirt sleeves grazing my elbows. Thankfully, I had a belt to help with the jeans. The shoes were surprisingly okay in terms of size. I was pretty sure they were women’s shoes, but as long as they fit, it didn’t matter to me. The t-shirt had a graphic of a smiley face on it and the corny words, “Light up the world!” Probably some Christian thing. But clothes were clothes, and it wasn’t like I was going anywhere. I was just glad to have something that didn’t scream “criminal” like the all-black ensemble I’d discarded had been.

_Criminal._

_Mutant._

I was racking up labels like no one’s business.

_Monster._

_Freak._

I balled up the old clothes and threw them in the bathroom garbage can.

* * *

I spent the night on the couch, while Jack slept in the single double size bed that was in the hotel room. I couldn’t sleep. My thoughts were racing, and I still hurt too much to be able to fall asleep; it didn’t help that another headache had started up. Funny how the glasses didn’t seem to help with those anymore since my mutant power had manifested. But we didn’t have any over-the-counter pain medication, so I was stuck with feeling like I’d been hit by a truck.

The hotel room was dark, except for the TV that was still on across from Jack’s bed. He’d been watching it before he fell asleep, and it still droned on. I got up from the couch and walked over to the bed, sitting at the foot of it and staring up at the television screen to watch the late night news.

The lady on the screen spoke in that practiced newscaster’s voice that they all had—all of them sounded the same—and she was saying something or other about the senatorial elections. I recognized one of the names that scrolled by near the bottom of the screen: Robert Kelly. I’d seen his name in the paper a while back.

_“… is expected to include his platforms on super-powered individuals, especially with the dawn of groups such as the Avengers and the troubling issue of so-called ‘mutants’ being born into the general population. Take a listen to this sound bite offered by the Kelly campaign.”_

The screen changed to a transcript of the speech instead of the newscaster, and I read along automatically as Kelly’s voice started to drone.

_“The Avengers. Everyone has heard of them these days. Everyone has heard of their exploits and their heroism—and yet, where is the accountability? One of their members can barely be controlled as it is. I ask you, do you really feel safe as citizens when people like these can do whatever they want as long as they say that they did it for the so-called greater good? Take a look at the property damage totals from their most recent escapades. Over two million in personal losses for average, law-abiding citizens._

_“The Avengers, however, are just the tip of the iceberg. Most of their group are just people like you and me who have taken advantage of their god-given gifts of genius and ambition and created technologies to create their ‘powers.’ There is a greater threat out there, ladies and gentlemen, and my platform is the only one to have acknowledged this issue as part of his campaign: the mutant menace. Super-powered freaks, living in our midst. There have been more and more incidents of late, and as more data is gathered, it is obvious that this issue is more than just a panicked urban legend. This menace is all too real._

_“So I call upon you, my fellow New Yorkers and Americans, to support my campaign and hold these people accountable. We will find a solution to the devil-may-care attitude of the Avengers towards the common man, and the infiltrating threat of mutants in our neighborhoods, schools, and our very lives. Mark my words—a vote for Kelly is a vote for the everyman! God bless.”_

Back to the newscaster. I wasn’t sure I wanted to watch much more of this. Everywhere I looked int he news these days, there was something about mutants. Hell, _I’d_ made the news. Not the way I’d ever wanted to, though. How all the boys in the orphanage joked about five minutes of fame. Yeah, more like five minutes of _infamy_. Only this nightmare had lasted far more than five minutes, and wasn’t about to end anytime soon.

I listened to the news lady as the topic shifted to the weather. It was late October, and getting cooler by the day. I hadn’t even kept track of what day it was for the weeks I’d been with Jack. Had I really been out of the orphanage for a month? I wondered what had become of Nate without me to defend him. He was a little kid, and though I was just as skinny, I at least had height and age on him. I hoped he was okay.

The TV droned on as I leaned back against the foot of the bed, arms hooked around my knees. I was so tired. But it still hurt so bad. Jack started snoring.

Sighing, I rolled to my feet with a quiet grunt of pain and made my way to the bathroom, where I could at least be free of the noises my guardian was making. I shut the door and turned on the light, staring at my reflection in the mirror. I was reminded of when Jack had first picked me up weeks ago. The promise I had made.

“I’m sorry, Mom. Dad,” I murmured, turning away from the mirror and grabbing a towel from the rack and laying it on the floor. A bug scuttled out of my way as I lay down on top of it, folding my hands on my stomach and staring up at the ceiling. Mold was growing in the corner of it near the shower head. I just lay there, thinking.

I wondered if there was a cure for being a mutant. I mean, they were working on genetic stuff like that, right? Maybe? That’s assuming it _was_ genetic, and not something else. I wasn’t very scientifically-minded, though, so I had no idea what else it could be. The news had said it was probably genetic. That man, Doctor Charles Xavier, had thought it to be a genetic mutation. Maybe _he_ knew enough about it to work on a cure. I’d have to go to a library sometime if Jack and I ever stopped near enough to one, and do some research.

No, no. Who was I kidding. I couldn’t go out in public any more than necessary. What if people recognized me? But no, my hair was still dyed, and now I even had different glasses than before. God, I was going in circles. Just couldn’t stop worrying over it.

But I _had_ to worry over it. This was my life now. I could kill with a look.

I squeezed my eyes shut. Maybe it would be better if I just gouged them out or something. Then I could pass for human again—blind, but human. _Normal._

Jack wouldn’t let me. I couldn’t risk making him mad or losing him. I’d have died or gotten caught by the police without him. I owed him. Especially after ruining things for him and maybe inadvertently killing his team back at the facility.

_Murderer._

Was that who I was now, too?

* * *

The next day, we drove up north. Minnesota. It was getting colder and colder now, and on November 1st, it snowed for the first time in the season. Three inches, with more to come in the next couple weeks. I remembered the heavy winters when I’d lived in Alaska with my family—before the plane crash. I didn’t like the snow. It just reminded me of that day.

Jack had picked us out a new place to stay, but we’d forgone apartments for the time being and instead gone with an extended hotel stay. It was about the same quality as the one wherever we’d stopped after fleeing from the nuclear research facility in Illinois, but more spacious. There were three rooms—the bathroom, bedroom, and then the combined living-room-kitchen-dining-room. My sleeping area was the couch. I didn’t mind all that much. Better than the floor.

Once again, I was left in the hotel on my own and told not to leave while Jack spent almost all his time outside of it. The only times he returned were to sleep, drink, and smoke. He smoked a lot more than he used to when I first joined up with him. And drank more. With the drinking came more violence towards me, and sometimes I was able to avoid it by hiding in the bathroom, but not usually.

Thankfully, though, my injuries from when he really went ballistic on me were healing up day by boring day. I still looked awful, but less awful was better.

It was snowing again in the second week of November we were in Minnesota, and I was pretty sure the heating was out of whack, because it must have been almost freezing in the hotel room. I was huddled up on the couch with two layers of blankets and the hoodie Jack had gotten me the other day, and I was still cold, my teeth chattering.

I heard a key turn in the lock, and I shrank back into the couch cushions as if to make myself a smaller target as Jack entered, stomping around in the kitchen area as he grabbed a beer from the mini-fridge.

“It’s our lucky day, boy. Got us a new job,” he said in a tone that was dangerously cheery. My heart sank. I’d known it was only a matter of time, but I’d held out hope. _Stupid, Summers. Stupid._

“What is it, sir?” I asked, my voice quiet. Jack opened his beer and dragged one of the two dining table chairs over to the living room part where I was, sitting in it backwards with his legs spread about the seat back. He took a long swig of the beer, and then offered it to me in a gesture I’d never seen before. Slightly stunned, I shook my head. I was underage. I couldn’t drink. He seemed to know what I was thinking—maybe he did, with his power—and smirked, responding by tiling his head back and drinking half of the beer right there.

“Such a good little twerp, you are. We’ll beat that out of you soon enough, sonny. Now, the job is a private vault break. Rich bimbo lives in a mansion about twenty miles out from here. Practically got ‘er own private museum collection, but we’re gonna break in and collect the goods underneath the old place. A few zaps from you, and everything in our way is toast. Then we’ll be on our way again. Hate the cold,” he said, spitting to the side as if to emphasize his point.

I wanted to ask so badly to go to school. Or at least to be let out of the apartment one of these days. I spent my days watching mind-numbing television and just thinking and sleeping and reading the news. I wanted _books,_ at least. Sometime to keep me from thinking about my own situation too much. I found myself missing the orphanage. At least there, there had been predictable routine and things with which to occupy myself.

“Job’s in a couple days. And this time, boy, you’d better do exactly as I say. I’ve got my eye on you. One wrong move, and our little arrangement is over for good,” Jack continued. I nodded automatically. “I gave you a second chance after your mother of all screwups before. Don’t you fuckin’ dare expect me to give you another,you hear?”

“Yessir,” I said. Jack finished his beer and lobbed the empty bottle at me as he stood. I couldn’t untangle my arms from the blankets fast enough to catch it, and it hit me on the collarbone. He chuckled at me and dragged the chair back towards the kitchen area. “Order yourself some pizza or somethin’. I’m staying out tonight. Money’s on the table, kid.”

Pizza, again. It had been a treat back when having it at the orphanage was a rarity, but now it was my go-to staple food. All the topping variations in the world couldn’t make it more palatable after days upon days of it.

“Yessir,” I said again, and huddled back into the couch, the beer bottle rolling off my lap where it had fallen and clunking onto the floor. So cold. Even so, I wanted to get out of this place. Jack was staying out. Really, what was stopping me?

He could find out. He could get in my head if he really wanted to, and he’d know and he’d hit me, and my sense of self-preservation won out over my cabin fever. I stayed inside and did as I was told, as usual.

The pizza sucked and the Avengers were on TV that night.


	6. Cold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another heist, and the library book.

I was back in Omaha, walking down the street in town with Nate as we trailed the other faceless orphan kids in their cliques. It felt strange, like I was just drifting along, half aware of my surroundings. It all blurred together. Nate slapped me on the back, perhaps in a friendly gesture, and it hurt.

The moment it connected, I was gone from the city streets and strapped to some sort of table. There was a rectangle of red material curved in front of my eyes, held in place by a metal arm. A voice—humming some classical tune I didn’t recognize—and the owner of the voice appearing to not be anything more than a shadow as the figure passed in front of me.

Machines whirred. My head hurt. It hurt a _lot,_ like it was splitting open. I heard myself screaming, but in the dream world it was the same as not making any sound at all. My eyes burned, my head ached, the voice laughed, and shadow swept over me, and I was falling.

The ground rushed up to meet me, and I tucked my limbs closer around myself—no, not myself, it was Alex, held tight to my chest—and we went tumbling through the deep snow on the mountainside. A hidden rock revealed itself to the side of my head.

My head hurt, and I saw red.

It was so cold.

I found Alex and held him close, whispering assurances while we both cried.

Fire. Falling. Red.

My mother’s eyes as she pushed us out of the plane. I hadn’t gotten to say goodbye.

My father’s grim face as he looked back at us, trying to control the plane’s descent. I never saw him smile again.

I opened my eyes and I saw red and Alex was gone and the light from my eyes blasted right through the ground and I was falling, red, fire, falling, burning—

* * *

It was snowing again on the day of the job, and I rested my elbow against the armrest on the side of the car door as Jack drove us to the mansion. He’d made his usual threats, and then twisted my wrist almost enough to sprain it with that iron grip of his, and then we’d left the hotel with all of our belongings. We wouldn’t be returning there again, no matter if the job went well or if it was a bust.

I watched the snow as it beat past the window, watched my breath fog the glass. It was almost magical, if it didn’t feel like we could go spinning off the road on a patch of ice at any moment. Jack seemed to be a capable driver, though, and the journey was made in relative silence. He didn’t even put on the radio. But he did smoke, and with the windows rolled up to keep out the snow, the smell was becoming suffocating. But I didn’t complain.

We drove until the light dimmed from the sky—the coming winter season bringing about the darkness faster than before—and we finally parked off the side of a one-way road that seemed ill-kept and rarely traveled.

“Just do as I say, and this job’s a cinch, sonny,” Jack grunted, putting out his cigar in the dusting of snow that had accumulated on the roof. I shut my door carefully behind myself and nodded, shoving my gloved hands into my pockets and already shivering. I didn’t have the layers to last long in this weather. Only a hoodie on top of that smiley-face shirt Jack had given me before, and my jeans. Jack, on the other hand, was decked out in a hat, scarf, jacket, sweats, and snow boots, plus his standard gloves. I didn’t get that part. Wouldn’t his hands get cold through the rubber?

Jack tossed me a flashlight, and I caught it before crossing over to his side of the car, ready to follow behind him like the good little weapon I was. I noticed he’d brought his gun, too. It made me uneasy.

We trekked through the woods that were presumably all that lay between the side road and the mansion grounds. The snow buildup was irritating. Even with the flashlight, seeing where I was going was difficult, so I followed close. It was several minutes before we reached a brick wall that reached up about eight or nine feet.

“C’mon, gimme a boost and I’ll pull you up. We’ll break it if we need a quick exit, but there ain’t no barbed wire on it, so climbin’ is better for now,” Jack said, and nodded to the wall. We both put our flashlights in our mouths, and I braced my back against the wall and linked my fingers together, preparing myself to take his weight. When he planted his booted foot into my hands and pushed, I gasped at how heavy he was and almost let him fall. The threat of being shot or beaten gave me the strength to grit my teeth and lift with all my might—I was almost sure I’d strained muscles in my arms afterwards.

Jack scrambled onto the top of the wall and then lowered a hand to help me to the top as well.

“Damn, kid. You’re as light as you look,” he muttered, lifting me with ease as I ran up the side of the wall. Panting and puffing clouds of mist around the flashlight in my teeth, I took a breather as Jack went ahead and slid down the other side. “Come _on,_ Summers. And I ain’t askin’ twice.”

“Yessir.” I obediently swung around and gripped the edge of the wall with my fingertips, the too-big gloves almost making me loose my grip before I was ready. My breath caught as I felt the stomach-dropping sensation of falling for an instant, and then I managed to recenter myself enough to lower and drop the rest of the way down. My heart was practically beating out of my chest.

Jack didn’t wait for me as he turned and took his flashlight from his mouth, forging onwards. I followed suit, shivering and teeth chattering as a stuff breeze blew right through the material of my hoodie and chilled me to the bone. God, it was too much like then. Too much like that time Alex and I were alone on the mountainside, cold and lost. _Shut it down, Summers,_ I thought to myself, shaking my head of the memories. _Not now._

We walked ahead, and within a few minutes, we could see lights through the snow that had started to come down a little harder again.

“There we are. Building apart from the main mansion on the right. I’ve got security for the initial entry, and once we get inside that place, it’s all you, boy,” Jack said, slapping me on the back. I flinched. It hurt. It reminded me of my dream the night before, and that didn’t make my mind rest any more easy.

“Yessir,” I said automatically, and followed again. We reached the building—it looked almost like a small chapel in architecture, except that there were no crosses anywhere. Definitely old. Even so, as we ascended the few steps and huddled under the small awning area, I saw the fancy keypad by the door that Jack was hooking some cables into from his bag.

“Keep an eye out, boy,” he ordered me, and I nodded, turning away as he worked the lock. I folded my arms over my chest and shivered uncontrollably as I scanned the area. I wasn’t much use as a lookout in these conditions, since I didn’t want to point my flashlight around willy-nilly for fear of being seen from the main building and since I could hardly make out the shapes of shadows with my glasses. Everything was just a dark red smudge for the most part. “Got it.” I turned as the door made a soft _beep_ and then _click_ sound, and Jack grinned at me, gesturing for me to step inside. I did.

Oh, the warmth was _incredible._ I felt like I hadn’t felt warm in years stepping inside that building. Jack followed at my heels, closing the door behind us. It was dark, but we swung our flashlights around to see dozens of glass cases housing what looked to be old artifacts and treasured objects. Vases and busts, swords, and even an odd suit of armor were scattered around the space.

“Aren’t there more securi—”

“Already disabled. You worry about blowing shit up. I’ll do my part. Now shut up and follow, you dumb kid,” Jack said. I fell silent as he pushed past me into the room and made his way to a small door on the side of one of the walls. Another keypad, which he summarily disabled, and we made our way down the concrete steps. “This is where things get fun, boy.”

As we reached the basement, there was a huge metal vault door before us. It was almost as big as the big door back at the Illinois facility, but not quite.

“Blast it.” Jack was holding his flashlight in one hand, and with his other, he put his hand on his hip, right above where his gun was holstered.

I was afraid I’d be damaging whatever it was we were there to collect, but I took a deep breath and did as I was told, lifting my glasses to my forehead and opening my eyes for a second.

_HHSSZZZAAAAKKAMM!_

The door was pummeled against the back wall of the vault, shaking the building’s foundations, and I heard crashes from the main floor as holding cases were broken and objects fell and shattered. I winced and stepped away, returning my glasses to their rightful place as I opened my eyes to survey the damage. Destruction. It seemed like the only thing I was capable of.

“Perfect!” Jack grinned and stepped into the vault, chuckling at the door that was embedded within what looked to have been a wall of lockboxes or something before they’d all been smashed and crumpled beyond recognition. I carefully picked my way over twisted metal to follow him inside. Jack went to the left wall—mostly undamaged—and squinted at the numbers on the boxes before his face lit up as he reached the one he wanted. He took a key and then slid the whole box out, placing it in his bag. “Couple more and we’re golden.”

He repeated the process for two more boxes, both following their companion into the bag. I was curious as to what this rich person could have within these specific boxes that was more important or expensive than the stuff upstairs, but I held my tongue, as usual.

Mindless, like a weapon. That’s what I had to be. Mindless and silent except for when I fulfilled my purpose.

“Alright, now lets get out of this shithole.”

We left the way we came, and to my surprise, this time there were no sirens waiting for us as we escaped into the snow, retracing our steps.

“Snow’ll cover our tracks perfectly. Might be able to get outta here without blowing up that wall after all. No one seemed to hear your little trick downstairs, eh? Finally, you’re coming in handy,” Jack said over his shoulder as we trudged our way back through the snow towards the outer wall. I was already shivering, and my toes were numb in my shoes. Melted snow had gotten in on the way to the vault, and it was freezing up again now. I drew my hood over my head in an attempt to shield myself from the wind that blasted large snowflakes into my face, but the wind blew it right off again. I tried again and this time held it up with one hand. My fingers were as frozen as my toes.

A few minutes later, as the storm started to worsen, we reached the wall and repeated the process for getting over it. As Jack clambered onto the top, he knocked the snow that had accumulated aside and down the neck of my hoodie. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out the memories from the day the plane crashed. Snow, everywhere. Cold. Frozen, almost frostbitten. Mild hypothermia. I hurried over the wall with Jack.

By the time we reached the car again, at least an inch or two of snow had fallen on it, and Jack ordered me to help dust it off. I did, my muscles stiff the cold and teeth chattering. Finally, _finally,_ I was allowed to get into the car. It was still freezing inside, but Jack turned on the heat immediately as we hit the road, after he’d thrown the bag in the backseat.

“Well, you actually pulled your weight this time, so I don’t have to leave you out here to die,” Jack chuckled, grinning that shark’s grin at me as he drove through the snow. Only now did it seem to be lightening up on the snowfall, though the winds were still strong. I was huddled into myself as far as I could go in the seat, arms wrapped tightly around myself and breathing warm air on my hands from time to time. “We’re headed out of this place and down south towards Missouri. Gonna be a long drive. Hey, kid, you don’t know how to drive, do you?” It took a moment for his words to register with me—my mind seemed slow and lethargic from being half-frozen.

“Uh?”

“Damn it, boy, listen to me when I’m talkin’ to you!” He flung one of his hands out towards me, and I raised my arms instinctively in defense. His heavy, rock-hard hand struck me on my left forearm, and I was sure by the hiss of pain I let out that it would be bruising.

“ ‘m sorry, sir,” I muttered, scooting away from him as much as I could manage in the passenger seat and avoiding his eyes.

“I _asked_ if you knew how to drive,” Jack said, his voice as icy as the wind that was blowing outside. I cleared my throat softly and stuck my hands under my thighs to try and warm them up more.

“No, not really, sir. Never really had the chance to learn at the orph—”

“I didn’t ask for your damn life story, Summers! So you can’t drive. I’ll teach you so _I’m_ not the one always carting us around places.”

And so I learned to drive. And we moved again.

* * *

Over the winter months I spent with Jack… _Winters_ … we must have moved at least a dozen times. Our jobs were smaller, quieter, ever since I’d messed up at the nuclear research facility in Illinois. We had to keep moving, or Miriam and Vince’s mysterious employer would be breathing down our necks for not only failing to safely return their agents, but also for failing to even secure the loot, which Jack had sold to another buyer.

Even though I wasn’t in school anymore, I _did_ learn things. I learned how to drive. I learned how to pick a lock. I learned how to hack a digital keypad. I learned who to go to and what you’d need for a new fake ID and other documents. I learned credit card fraud.

I learned how to be a criminal. And I hated it.

Over time, Jack had grown more lenient with how I was cooped up in our hotel rooms or apartments, and I was allowed to leave by myself and go to town for more than just food and supplies. I spent most of my time in the libraries of the towns we drifted through—and that’s where I learned what I _really_ wanted to learn, about mutants. About how dangerous it was to be one, from all the news articles.

I learned about planes, too, when reading about mutant affairs grew too much. I’d always loved planes, even after the crash, though the thought of actually flying in one again sent shivers down my spine.

Since I hadn’t gone to school since I’d first run away, I even tried to catch up on what I thought I might supposed to be studying. Math was my favorite. Orderly. It made sense, and there was always a right answer. I liked being right. I liked things falling into place the way they should.

My identity must have changed almost as regularly as our moves, but now I at least had grown the blonde out of my hair. My hair was still shorter than I was used to, but maybe that was a good thing. It had always been a bit long at the orphanage. Easier to keep up with now, anyway.

As the season shifted and winter’s cool touch faded from the air and the landscape, Jack and I found ourselves in Troy, New York—just outside the state capital of Albany. It was more heavily populated than a lot of the other smaller towns and cities we’d stayed in, and in a way, it was refreshing. Watching the normal people on the streets and in their cars, going about their lives and going to work and shopping and just _being,_ it was like watching a movie. Unreal.

We had an apartment this time—just as trashy as usual—just as tiny as a hotel room, with only one bedroom. I took the couch, as had become typical. My feet always hung off the end of it. Jack refused to buy or give me the money for an air mattress, and I wasn’t about to break the law and commit fraud just to sleep more comfortably. I had enough on my conscience already.

Today, I was at one of the local libraries, poring through the aviation section as I flipped through pages of advanced fighter jets and even commercial airplanes. I paused at the SR-71 Blackbird and leaned against the bookcase as I admired the photograph in the book and read the specs I’d already memorized. It had always been my favorite plane. I could remember that even from before the crash. The streamlined silhouette, the sleek, black design. The dual J58 turbojet engines, propelling it at over Mach 3. It was _beautiful._ I checked out the book and brought it back to the apartment with me as dusk started to settle in. It was the first book I’d ever checked out on my own.

I didn’t say anything as I opened the door to our place, carefully and quietly shutting it behind me in case Jack was taking a nap. I’d learned from experience that to call out any sort of greeting upon returning would be met with a stern reprimand and a couple more bruises that I got used to hiding underneath long sleeves. With my book tucked under my arm, I went over to the kitchen to grab a soda from the fridge and then I slumped into the couch in the living room. I studied the book and read quietly as I sipped my drink, and for a rare moment, I could almost fool myself into thinking I was a normal kid with a normal life. Almost. The red filter always stood in the way.

It must have been another two hours before Jack got home, and by that time it was pitch black outside. As I heard the key turn in the lock, I jumped up and scrambled to shove my precious book under the couch, noticing that I needed to clean under there again. Some old roach carcasses crunched as the hardcover volume joined them and the dust bunnies that made that little cave their home. I wasn’t sure why I hid it—I just had the feeling that Jack wouldn’t approve. I needed him to approve.

“Hmph,” Jack mumbled as he barged into the apartment, shuffling and swaying a bit on his feet. He was drunk again, with a cigarette perched between his meaty lips. I sunk back into the couch, making myself as small a target as I could. “Summers! Gimme a beer! Now!”

Well, there went my plan of staying out of sight. Heart sinking, I did as he said, carefully moving past him into the kitchen again to fetch him a beer. I opened it and padded back over to him, handing it off. He reached out, missed it at first, and then grabbed it on the second try, spitting out his cigarette butt to the floor without a thought and tossing the beverage back. I picked up the cigarette butt dutifully and disposed of it, and then I slunk back to the couch, sitting down and doing my best to ignore the sound of belching from a couple meters away.

“ ’s all coming’ together,” Jack slurred. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or not. I didn’t get up. “Few more pieces… More research… Heh. World won’t know what hit ‘em. Jack o’ Diamonds!” He yelled the last bit, and I flinched. Yelling usually always meant anger. And when he was angry, I was the punching bag. I’d resigned myself to the role by now, but it didn’t mean I looked forward to it.

Right on cue, Jack stomped over to the couch and stood in front of me with his near-empty beer bottle in hand, a cocky grin on his face. He hadn’t shaved in a few days. And he smelled. I could tell even above the already-rank stench of the apartment. Jack leaned over me, bracing his hands on the couch cushions right along either side of my lap, getting right up in my face as the remains of his beer trickled into the couch cushions from the bottle tucked under his right hand.

“Yer my… my secret weapon. Those blasted eyes of yers, eh, sonny? Eh?” He reached up and tapped the bridge of my glasses with one finger, almost falling on top of me from losing his balance in the process of the gesture. I closed my eyes. “Heheh. _Blasted._ Git it? ‘Cause yer eyes… _blast._ Eheheh.” As he pushed back from the couch, his foot drifted underneath it, and I heard a faint _thunk_ as the tow of his boot connected with the spine of my book. “Hm?”

_Ignore it, please ignore it, please._

He leaned down and promptly fell the rest of the way to the floor. I was motionless. It wasn’t funny, though it might have been to someone else and in a different context. He fumbled underneath the couch for a moment, and then clumsily got back to his feet with my plane book in hand.

“Fuck’s this?” Jack mumbled, flipping through it absently. The beer bottle was left on the couch beside me, and I could feel the beer seeping through the couch fibers and reaching the side of my pant leg. “I said, the fuck’s this?” He shoved the book in my face.

“I-it’s a book I got from the library, sir. I—”

I was cut off by a huge guffaw. Jack leaned back, his beer belly jutting out as he dropped the book into my lap and swayed before leaning back forward. I couldn’t read him. I couldn’t tell if he was amused or pissed or… or both.

“Aw, ya got yerself a cute little airplane book, huh? That’s _adorable,_ kid. Can you even read the words, or do you just look at the pictures?” Jack grinned, reaching down and grabbing his beer bottle, seemingly not aware that its contents had leaked out. He brought it to his lips and frowned as reality struck.

“I can… I can read…” I whispered.

The beer bottle came swinging down on my head, and I saw black spots dance in my vision before the pain even hit. When it did, I couldn’t help letting out a cry of agony, my hands going to my skull as I whimpered on the couch. The bottle hadn’t even broken. I felt blood running down my forehead as I tucked my body as small as I could, guarding my head.

“ ‘I CAN READ,’ _SIR!”_ Jack bellowed in my ear, and tears prickled at my eyes, more from the pain than his admonishment. My plane book was sitting in my lap, cradled and protected by my body.

“I can… I-I can read, sir,” I murmured. I was in Alaska. Falling. My head struck stone. Pain. Darkness. _It hurt._ I was protecting Alex with my body. I was protecting my book.

“That’s better,” Jack growled, and I felt his gloved hand grab a handful of my hair, yanking my head up so that I had to partially get off of the couch. The book fell to the floor. My head was screaming with pain, but I only whimpered softly as he pulled me up to face him. Blood dripped down my face and onto my nose. “You respect me, boy. You respect me in my house, ya hear? You call me ‘sir’ or I swear I will break your fucking arms, both of ‘em. You disrespect me, and I’ll kill ya. Do you know the sacrifices I’ve made t’ keep you here? Huh? HUH?”

“Yessir,” I squeaked, blinking and then closing my eyes again as blood dripped onto my eyelid.

“I let you into MY house. Under MY roof. I OWN YOU! YOU OWE ME _EVERYTHING!_ ” He shoved me back towards the couch, and I fell, hand going to my throbbing head wound as my body hit the cushions. “I OWN YOU, BOY!”

I stayed as still as possible as he yelled at me. Our neighbors would hear. I was ashamed.

And as I buried my face into the couch and shielded myself with my hands over my head and my knees tucked close, I heard him lean down as he paused in his speech. I heard him pick up my book.

And I heard him tear it right in half.

It was silly. It was so silly, for me to get upset over a dumb book. It was just a _book._ It wasn’t even _mine._ Maybe that made it worse somehow. But as Jack tossed the pieces onto my back, the loose pages fluttering around me and a couple of them settling lightly onto my neck like feathers, I truly cried for the first time in Jack’s presence.

He raged at me for a few more minutes. He threw the empty beer bottle at me, instead of hitting me with it, and this time it bounced off my shoulder blade. He was so loud. I cried noiselessly and stained the already beer-soaked couch cushions with tears as they leaked from behind my glasses. I felt him hit me a few times, hard. My head pounded. I was getting another headache, on top of what was probably my second concussion. Damaged goods. That’s what I was.

I didn’t know how long it had been when Jack finally tired himself out of his inebriated fury and swaggered on off to his room for the night. I was alone.

I rolled over and off the couch to the floor, grunting in pain as my muscles and bones screamed where he’d struck me. My head was spinning slightly, and I slumped against the side of the couch, finally opening my eyes again to see the destruction. The beer bottle had been smashed at some point, and the glass shards were littered on the carpeting along with the forlorn, crumpled, and stepped-on pages of my plane book. It was a miracle I hadn’t sliced my hands on the glass pieces as I’d fallen onto the ground just then.

Sniffling, I started collecting the pages of the book meticulously, starting with the cover and working my way through the contents, the aviation history, the biplanes, the prop planes, the war planes, the spy planes, the commercial planes, the experimental planes, the rockets and shuttles, the index. I collected all of them. I paused as I found the split pages of the SR-71, holding them up with shaking fingers before hugging them to my chest.

_I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to be with Mom and Dad and Alex and I want to fly again and not be afraid and… and…_

I bit my lip. I wouldn’t cry again, I wouldn’t.

I took shuddering breaths, in and out, letting my arms relax and letting the pages fall back to the floor.

I felt so empty.

I sat there for a few more minutes, just breathing, trying to calm myself down, and then I gathered the pages neatly into a stack, in order, how I liked things. I picked up the wrecked library book, standing there on unsteady feet as blood dripped off my nose and onto the front cover, which featured the Wright brothers with the first airplane and the Apollo 11 rocket launch and a McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II. It dripped onto the wing of the Phantom, and then slid down the leg of Wilbur Wright before falling off the edge of the cover.

I trudged over to the kitchen, and promptly shoved the whole carefully-organized book into the trash bag on the floor.

I didn’t dream that night. Not even a nightmare.

* * *

In the middle of the night—really, probably closer to the morning—I got up from the couch with my head still throbbing and my body still aching and stumbled over to the trash bag. I picked through it carefully, deliberately, until I finally fished out the slightly smelly and stained pages for the SR-71 Blackbird. I folded them neatly and tucked them into my back pocket. And then I went back to the couch and passed out until dawn.


	7. Red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack o' Diamonds.

Jack didn’t tell me his plan when he made me pack up our things and load the car for the third time in April, and as usual, I didn’t ask. I had a bad migraine in addition to the usual bumps and bruises and the angry red hand-print around my arm he’d given me when he’d yanked me off the couch that morning. I didn’t want to make it any worse. There wasn’t much to pack, and when I was done, I waited in the car as per Jack’s instructions until he was ready.

He finally emerged from the apartment complex, sporting his usual gloved look and with a large duffel bag in his hand, one that he’d used for a couple previous jobs to laboratories and universities. It looked heavy. As he sat down in the driver’s seat, he flung it into my lap, and I caught it—it was just as heavy as it looked—it must have been about fifty pounds with whatever was inside it. I let out a gasp as the bag knocked the air out of me for a moment, but I didn’t say anything.

“Alright, let’s get this show on the road, kid,” Jack muttered, and adjusted the rearview mirror before turning the key. In the fading evening light, we were off. I wondered if we’d ever be to Troy again. Probably not.

The drive was about two hours long, and Jack turned on the radio this time as we drove. Country music. He hummed along, and I tried not to wince as the noise only exacerbated my headache. It felt like the migraines had gotten worse since he’d hit me with that beer bottle a few days ago, but I could have just been imagining it.

We arrived outside a fenced-in area, but on a side that made it so that I couldn’t make out the sign to the building from our angle. I had no idea where we were or what this place was.

“Bring the bag,” Jack ordered me as he pulled on his mask. I narrowed my eyes in confusion—something he couldn’t see me do because of the glasses—but did as he ordered after putting on my own mask. Lifting the thing wasn’t too bad on its own, but lugging the unwieldy thing around as fast as possible quickly grew difficult. I staggered over to the fence after Jack, bag in hand, and I put my hand to my glasses to break through the fence at his nod.

With a flash of red and the crash of metal, a decent-sized section of the fence was instantly obliterated, the chain link section I’d pummeled with my optic blasts lying meters away, like a giant had just punched it out of its place. Jack didn’t even look at me to acknowledge my contribution before running through the gap in the fence, leaving me to keep hauling the bag that must have been almost half my bodyweight. Of course it had to be a duffel bag instead of something more practical, like a backpack. Oh, well. It wasn’t like I could change anything about it.

Jack led us to the back of the building, where there was a small door by a loading bay. Jack bypassed the digital keypad like a pro, and we were in without any blasting. I was glad.

“C’mon, keep up,” he growled as we hurried down the hallways. I hefted the bag up on my shoulder with a quiet grunt of effort, struggling to match his pace. He seemed more on edge tonight, and I wondered if it had any reason to do with why he had brought something so heavy with us on the job. I never knew what we were stealing. He never told me. I never asked. “I said, come _on!_ ” I’d fallen too far behind. Wearing the mask was making it hard to breathe, and I was sweating through my clothes. Jack turned and yanked the bag from my grip, and I held up my hands to defend against the blow I thought was coming, but didn’t—he was already continuing down the hall, almost at a jog.

“Hey, you there!”

Oh, _no._

Two security guards came at us with nightsticks drawn at a T-intersection in the hallway, and my heart sank like a rock. Jack’s free hand was on his gun in an instant, and I knew I had to do something. I couldn’t let Jack kill these innocent men. But I couldn’t blast Jack, and I couldn’t blast the guards—the only way to prevent an altercation would be to blast the ceiling like I had back during the Illinois job. And so that’s what I did.

_HHSHAAKT!_

_BLAMBLAM!_

The ceiling came down just as Jack fired, and I couldn’t tell from looking over Jack’s shoulder whether or not I’d been successful in averting harm. But the ceiling had come between us and the security people. At least Jack couldn’t finish the job if he _had_ shot one or both of them. I let out a sigh of relief. At least I hadn’t been forced to shoot them with an optic blast.

_“What the FUCK is wrong with you?!”_

There was the yelling, and the mental assault at the same time again—I hated when he did that. I fell against the wall, holding my head and ripping off that damned mask as if that would make the pressure exploding inside my skull any better. Jack tossed the bag aside and grabbed my arm, twisting it around behind my back as he kicked me down to my knees. He leaned over behind me, hissing in my ear.

“This is the last straw, kid. You don’t do anything without my say-so. Well, guess what? After this, I won’t even _need_ you anymore. You just signed your death warrant, Summers. It’s still up to you how painful you want that death to be, though. So don’t get any more heroic ideas,” He twisted my arm harder, and I yelped in pain, my knees shaking as I tried to steady myself with my free hand. Any more pressure and he would dislocate my arm.

“I-I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I couldn’t let you kill— _GYAAAHH!”_ I yelled in agony as he popped my arm from its socket, falling to the floor in a heap. I didn’t cry. God, it hurt. It hurt so bad. But I didn’t cry. I didn’t cry.

“Get UP, you lousy sack of shit! I can’t believe I put up with you for so long, you fucking pussy-ass bitch!” Jack shouted at me, and then yanked me up by my injured arm, dragging me along like the duffel bag he had in his other hand as I whimpered and keened in pain. I struggled to get to my feet as he pulled me through the hallway, my shoes squeaking and skidding against the immaculate floors. My shoulder was screaming in pain, and I was trying hard not to scream along with it as Jack kept twisting my arm as we went along.

A couple more turns in the hall, and we reached a large set of double doors.

“Blast ‘em, or I blast you,” Jack ordered, and shoved me forward, letting go of my arm. I tumbled to the floor, panting. It took me a moment to get up. Ignoring the pain in my head and now in my shoulder was getting hard even for me, with my years of practice. The kick to the ribs from Jack didn’t make rising any easier. “I said, MOVE!”

“Y-yessir,” I managed, and I moved, though not all on my own. I felt that tug at the front of my mind like I had back when he’d first taken me in. He was partially controlling me, but at this point, I was too hurt and tired to care or even be that upset about it. I was going to die now, anyway. Once he no longer needed me, I was gone. I was almost glad.

I felled the door with a blink—I was getting better at controlling the smaller bursts after months of practice—but it still sent the doors crashing into the room and against the back wall with the horrid screeching of metal-on-metal. Inside the room, there was another door to the left that Jack opened with his lock-picking expertise. There were “DANGER” signs posted on the door. Radioactive symbols. I wondered if radiation affected mutants differently than normal people.

“Get in here, boy,” Jack said, and I followed him inside, cradling my arm close to my chest. The lights turned on automatically, revealing a strange device off to one side, hooked up to an array of computers. There appeared to be some kind of focusing lens aimed through an opening inside a heavily reinforced chamber, with a couple inch-thick viewing windows on the chamber door. I looked around with my mouth slightly agape—of all the research facilities and labs we’d broken into, this one was by far the most strange. What _was_ all this stuff?

While I was caught up in my surroundings, Jack was taking off his mask and getting items out of the duffel bag he’d brought along, setting it all up beside the main computer mainframe and hooking wires into all of it. I stood off to the side, watching silently.

“This is it… Everything I’ve been working towards,” he muttered to himself. I pressed my back against the wall, not sure what else to do but stand there. I wondered how he was going to kill me. It didn’t bother me as much as I thought it should have. “Boy! Get over here.”

I did, still hugging my arm to myself as he stood from his work. I recognized devices we’d stolen from other places arranged on the ground and the table where a computer monitor was, wires linking it all. It was beyond me.

“Now, you will do exactly as I say, and when I say it.”

_< Or think it.>_

“Yessir,” I said automatically.

“You see this keyboard? Hit ‘return’ after I give you the okay from inside that chamber there. And don’t hit it again ’til I give you another signal, you hear?” He grabbed my injured shoulder and leaned me over the desk where the keyboard was, forcing me to look down at the keys. I closed my eyes from the pain, tears forming. But I wouldn’t cry.

“Yessir.”

What the hell was he _doing?_ Experimenting on himself?

He let me go with a shove, making me catch myself with my good hand against the edge of the desk as he took off his gloves for the first time in front of me. As I recovered from the shove, I gaped at him.

His hands were made of _glass._

“Diamond, boy. Diamond. And I’m about to make _all_ o’ me the same way. Jack o’ Diamonds! Ever wonder why I could hit you so hard, Summers? Ever wonder why _this_ hurt so much?” He grabbed the wrist of my injured right arm and squeezed, hard. My eyes watered, and I let out a pitiful whimper of pain. Jack just laughed, letting me go after a moment. “You’re a goddamn fool, boy. And if my information is right, this baby should amp up my mental powers, too—I’ll be unstoppable. Killing you, sonny, is gonna be the icing on the cake. Perfect way to test my new power…”

“W-why should I help you if… if you’re just gonna kill me after? Sir?” I asked. I was ready for another punch, or a kick, or even a slap, but he just laughed at me again, diamond hands on his hips.

_< You don’t have a fuckin’ choice.>_

“Besides, boy. I gave you the best life you could ever have! You would’ve been dead long ago if I hadn’t taken you in! You owe me all those days I gave you. You should be thankin’ me for letting you live this long. Actually, that sounds nice. Thank me, Scotty boy. Thank your good ol’ dad for all he’s done for you, huh?”

_You’re NOT my father._

_You’re not._

“Th-thank you. Sir.” I looked at my feet.

“Thank you, _father._ ”

I didn’t want to say it. He would _never_ be my father, no matter what he said. I didn’t remember much of my dad, but I could remember enough to know that he’d been a better man than this monster.

“Thank… thank you, father,” I whispered. I hated saying those words. I hated Jack. But he was the only one since I’d even had parents who’d given me anything. He was right. I owed him my life. I guess he was going to collect on that debt soon.

“Good boy. Now, time’s a-wasting. Let’s get this over with,” he said, and grinned, slapping me on the back hard with one of those diamond hands. It hurt, and it jarred my shoulder. I hissed in pain, gritting my teeth as I was sent stumbling towards the computer desk. I took my place, and Jack took his, opening the chamber door and stepping inside, closing it behind him.

_< Shut it behind me all the way, unless you wanna get a taste of this radiation I’m about to send in here, sonny.>_

I went over and shut it, and then went back to the computer, watching him ready himself inside the chamber. I had no idea what any of this technology was supposed to do, or how it worked, but when he nodded at me, I hit the button like he’d told me to.

The chamber filled with light, and Jack cried out as the light intensified over the course of just a few seconds. I could hardly see him at all through the viewing windows, and I couldn’t help but feel concerned for him, even though I was going to die by his hand shortly after.

Why couldn’t I run? I didn’t have to die, did I? He was in the chamber. I could run and never look back. But… he would find me. What was the point? He would find me, or I would get caught by the police and—and they would take me and—no, I had nowhere to go.

“You might find that you’re mistaken about that, Scott.”

“Wha—?!” I whirled around in a panic, holding my arm close and stepping back until my thighs bumped against the desk edge.

In the doorway was a bald man in a wheelchair, wearing a trim, well-fitting suit and tenting his fingers in his lap with his elbows resting on the wheelchair armrests.

_< Damn it, boy, take ‘im out!>_

Jack’s thought-voice came through like it was fuzzy, through a veil of weird static, probably from the machine.

“I-I can’t!”

“You don’t have to, Scott.” The man rolled the chair forward, and I looked between him and Jack in the glowing chamber, panicked. What could I do? How did he know my name? Who was he? No matter who he was, I couldn’t just… I couldn’t just shoot him! He was in a wheelchair, for crying out loud.

“G-get away from me,” I said shakily, trembling fingers moving to my glasses. Maybe I could take down a wall or ceiling or something—

_< BLAST HIM, YOU BITCH!>_

I felt that tug at the front of my head again, and my eyes widened in fear as I felt my good hand move without my consent to my glasses.

“No!” I felt a different sort of pull in my head as I wrenched my hand away, turning and keeling over onto the desk where I braced my hands, breathing hard. “Y-you can’t… you can’t make me do that!”

“No, he can’t. I’m helping you, Scott. You see, I’m a mutant, too. Like you. And my powers, like Jack Winters’ here, are also telepathic in nature. I can help you fight against him,” the man said from behind me.

“Get out of my head!” I cried, shaking in silent, tear-less sobs as I leaned against the desk, the light from the chamber still blindingly bright.

“I’m not in your head, Scott. Not anymore. I only helped defend against—hm.” I glanced over my shoulder to see the man in the wheelchair bent over slightly, as if in concentration. “Against your… 'guardian’s mental bombardment.”

“Who are you?” I asked, looking from Jack in the chamber to the man again, my thoughts racing. But my head was clearer than it had been in a while. My migraine was still there, but my thoughts were my own.

“I am Professor Charles Xavier,” he said, closing his eyes. He must have been fighting off more of Jack’s mental bolts. I started at the name—I _knew_ him. I’d read some of his papers on mutants. This… this was him? Wait, _he_ was a mutant, too? It made so much more sense now.

“What… what do you want from me?” I asked slowly, hesitantly. The machines behind me whined and groaned as the light seemed to get even brighter, and I glanced back at Jack, swallowing. “Are you gonna take me and use me, too, Professor?”

“No, Scott. I just want to help you. But to help you, you need to help yourself. I need you to turn off that machine. If Jack Winters succeeds in his plan, even together, we might not be able to stop him,” Xavier told me.

_He’ll kill us both. He’ll kill this man, too, if I don’t do something. I don’t care about me, but… I can’t let him kill anyone else. Stupid old man, putting himself in danger like this. How did he even find us? Where are the police? Oh, god. What do I do? I can’t just… betray Jack. No, no. Stupid, Summers, stupid. He was gonna kill you anyway. Gah! What… what would Mom and Dad want me to do?_

“Okay,” I whispered, and I turned to the computer.

_< Don’t you hit that button until I say, boy! You hear me? I’ll kill you! I’LL KILL YOU! I OWN YOUR CORPSE! YOU’RE DEAD!>_

I hit ‘return.’

The moaning of the machines stopped, and the light faded. I backed away slowly, back from the chamber and back from the Professor against the wall of the room.

_CRRRAAASH!_

The metal of the chamber door crumpled like paper and was wrenched aside from within, and my heart plummeted as I saw Jack emerge from the machine, skin glinting and refracting. I’d been too late. He laughed as he stalked over to the Professor, ignoring me. I cowered against the wall. This was it, wasn’t it? I was about to die.

“You fuckin’ interferin’ cue-ball! You’ll pay for that!” He raised his hand as if to strike the Professor.

“No, don’t!” I lifted my glasses and let out a warning blast just to the side of Jack, obliterating the wall of computers in a flash of red. I was already dead. But I couldn’t let Jack hurt this man. I had to be who my parents would have wanted me to be. I’d failed them for so long. I’d become a criminal. Maybe a killer. But maybe I could make it up a bit by saving this Xavier person.

Jack turned towards me with fire in those glassy eyes of his, the computers sparking and smoking behind him.

“I can’t breach his mind. I can’t even sense it. I don’t underst—”

“Professor!”

Jack had backhanded Xavier across the head, knocking him out. The man sagged in his wheelchair seat, blood dripping down his forehead. Oh, no. _Please don’t be dead. I was trying to save you, please don’t—_

“This diamond form’s pretty useful… I can’t seem t’ get in this old sap’s head, but he can’t get in mine, neither. And I don’t need to get in anyone’s head anymore anyway, now that I can crush your skull like a grape,” Jack said, grinning as he stepped closer to me.

“P-please, don’t—”

“Aw… you think I’m gonna go back on my word, sonny? That I’d spare you out of the goodness of my heart? Well, here’s news for ya, kiddo. My heart’s hard as diamond like the rest of me. I ain’t got a care for anyone or anything but _me._ And you… Summers, you made a mistake betraying me like that. Now you’re gonna pay for it, and all the other shit I’ve put up with from you.”

“Please—”

I was cut off as Jack grabbed my face with one hand, clamping his hard, cold fingers over my mouth to silence me before flinging me to the ground. I landed on my bad arm, and couldn’t stop a shout of pain from getting past my lips.

“You’re nothin’, boy! You never were, and now you never will be!”

His foot felt like he was wearing a steel-toed boot as it connected with my ribs, and I heard a crack as my chest exploded with pain. Stars and darkness danced in my vision, and I whimpered, curling my body inwards to shield myself as much as possible as more kicks connected. It felt like I was getting hit with bricks, over and over, until the pain just turned into numbness and my glasses had fallen off, but my eyes were closed so I didn’t even notice—I was bleeding, but I didn’t know from where or how bad it was, and then Jack was leaning over me, breathing on my face, and my limbs were splayed out, and I could hardly breathe, his hand was around my throat, it hurt so much, it hurt, it hurt, it _hurt_ —

“Open your eyes, sonny.”

“… Guh…” I couldn’t feel my face. Was that blood in my mouth? “… Cuh… can’t…”

“DO IT! I wanna see how invulnerability feels! Open your damn eyes, boy! You know you want to, anyway! Come on and just try to kill me! Just try and kill your old man, Jack o’ Diamonds!”

I opened my eyes. At least, as much as I could—one seemed almost swollen shut.

I opened my eyes and heard that hissing, electric noise and I saw Jack grinning as red light from my eyes poured over his crystalline face. I opened my eyes and saw a crack forming at the cleft in his chin.

“J-Jack…” I protested, and I closed my eyes.

“No! Keep ‘em open, dammit!” I felt his hard, beefy fingertips clawing at my face, opening my eyes forcefully, and I couldn’t stop the tears this time. I cried as he kept my eyelids from closing, sniffling as I stared up at the face of the only one who’d ever wanted me, the only one who’d given me anything since the plane crash, the only one who’d done anything for me.

And I watched and I cried as the crack in his face got bigger, as the red light spilled into it, as the crack split his face apart before his mouth could even make an “o” of surprise or shock, as the crack splintered and spread and spread until it was everywhere in an instant—the fault line from which the foundation was shattered.

In another instant, he was gone.

The weight vanished from my eyelids, and I closed my eyes as fast as I could, still crying, this time, sobbing. Hot tears ran with hot blood down my face. Diamond shards rested on my cheeks.

I was numb.

Oh, god.

Oh, god.

Oh, _god._

_I killed I’m a killer I killed him I killed him my fault he’s gone oh god oh god oh no please no let this all be a bad dream let me die let me die why couldn’t he have killed me I want to die let me die oh god no no no no no please no please god no—_

* * *

I was strapped to a table, but the table wasn’t flat. It was tilted at a weird angle, so that I was almost standing up, but not quite. The shadow at the edge of my vision laughed. My vision was in full color. It wasn’t red. I was so scared. I could feel my heart beating in my clenched fingers, in my bound wrists. My breaths were tight and sharp with fear.

The shadow got bigger, bolder, darker. The laughter got louder. A knife, no, a scalpel, held near my eyes, but I couldn’t move my head. There was a strap over my forehead, and I couldn’t turn at all.

“Please, no. Stop. Please…”

Pain, red, exploding. My head hurt and then it didn’t.

The ceiling, falling but not falling—falling outwards? No more knife. Darkness.

I stared and I stared into red night of red stars and I cried and the shadow was back and it was laughing and the stars were red and I hadn’t seen them in so long and I cried and—

I was on the mountainside with Alex, holding him, petting his hair like Mom did—had she done that? I couldn’t remember—and whispering into his ear that it would be okay, they would find us, someone would find us—my head hurt. Red. Red. Red.

Rubble everywhere.

Chunks of the exploded plane falling around me.

My fault.

Falling.

Fire.

Red.

I squeezed my eyes shut, but there was a shadow that fell over my face—with the shadow, there was cold—

Snow, down my shirt and in the space between my socks and my pant legs as I held Alex on the mountain—cold—teeth chattering, I couldn’t keep whispering to him anymore. I held him close. My head hurt. I shared my jacket with him. Cold.

Numb.

“Help me…”

“You are a very special child, Scott Summers.”

“Please…”

“Very special indeed. Not so much your little brother. Pity. I’ve been watching you both for some time.”

“Alex…”

“Gone.”

“No…”

The shadow whispered in my ear. I couldn’t see. And then I saw red. And it was numb. Was I seeing anything at all?

I couldn’t make out the words.

I was standing on the edge of the roof. Where was Toby? I couldn’t see. Wind, clawing at me. Red, look down, red, blood, oh, no.

Broken.

Was it me?

On the ground?

I looked up and saw red stars. Where was I?

Fear in my gut, cold, and red in my eyes, crying—blood?

I was falling and I was burning and I couldn’t feel anything at all.

I couldn’t think. Who was I?

I was strapped to a table. It was flat. Had I been asleep? I opened my eyes and saw red stars and the cracked edges of diamonds, twinkling, sparkling, like the snow. Cold. Winter. Winters. Fingers around my face, my eyes—the shadow? Winters? Who—?

Cold.

I yearned for someone I couldn’t remember. What was their name? Oh, no. Two someones. Mom, Dad? Blank faces, shouting. Burning.

We went to the zoo and there were polar bears. Alex. I remembered him. He tripped and fell.

Falling!

Oh, no.

I caught his hand—his hands—his body—holding him close—hold on tight. Don’t let go.

I love you.

I love you.

Don’t let go.

* * *

I woke up strapped to a table and I screamed.

The beeping of the heart rate monitor at my bedside hastened, as if it were trying to drown out my yells of panic with the faster tones, and as I flailed about, IV tearing from my hand, I realized I hadn’t been strapped down at all. I wasn’t on a table. I was in a bed. A hospital bed.

Panting, I looked around. A hospital. I needed to get out. They’d kept me in one of these places before—for too long—I wouldn’t let them keep me here again. I had to get out.

“Scott, it’s alright.”

My head whipped about to see the face of the man in the wheelchair again, Professor Charles Xavier, sitting at my bedside. I hadn’t noticed him before. What was happening?

All I could think of was that they’d found the torn pages of the SR-71 page of the plane book from that library in my pocket, and I’d be in trouble for it. I was wearing a hospital gown, after all. They’d have gone through my clothes. My right arm was in a sling across my chest.

I didn’t want to be there.

Then I remembered _why_ I was there.

And I slumped back into the hard pillows, lower lip trembling.

“I killed him.”

“Scott—”

“I killed him! I… I…” I couldn’t form the words. I looked down at my good hand in my lap, and clenched my fist. I had my glasses on, but they felt different. Heavier. Were they even mine? Oh, god. What if I hadn’t had glasses on when I’d woken up and opened my eyes?

Images flashed in my mind’s eye of a red-starred sky. When had that happened? Had it happened? No, no. It had only been a bad dream. Just a dream.

“Scott, it wasn’t your fault.”

“I killed him.”

“No. He killed himself.”

Oh, god. Another Toby. And it was my fault. I couldn’t hold on tight enough. Why had I let go? It was all my fault. I clutched the thin hospital bedsheets in my fist, tugged them closer. The heart monitor beeped faster. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe. Tears prickled at my eyes. Oh, god—I couldn’t breathe. Was Jack choking me again? No, there was no one—I couldn’t—

_< Breathe.>_

Voice in my head—like Jack—oh, god—

_< Breathe, Scott.>_

I gasped, sucked in air. I felt like there was a stone sitting on my chest. My blood pounded in my ears. I hadn’t even thought about how much everything hurt. I felt a pressure on my chest and around my back and felt the gauze against my ribs.

_< That’s it. You’re safe, Scott. You’re safe. Just breathe, son.>_

I closed my eyes, surrendering to the voice. I breathed. The beeping from the monitor slowed. In, and out. Like Robyn had taught me back at the orphanage.

There was a weird sort of tickle in my skull, like I’d forgotten something, but then forgotten that I’d forgotten it. Huh. I wondered what it was. I opened my eyes again and looked over at Professor Xavier, my body finally seeming more responsive and also reminding me that it was still in a great deal of pain.

I wiped my cheeks of the tears that had stained them, trying to hide the fact that I’d cried at all, and sucked it up through the discomfort. My whole body ached. My shoulder was sore. My face felt like someone had stepped on it, which might have been true, for all I knew.

But I was alive. And according to the voice—the Professor?—I was… safe. It was over.

It was hard to keep back the tears a second time, but I managed.

“You… you brought me here? Sir?” I asked, my voice shaky and thick with lack of use. My throat was dry and sore.

“I did. I was worried about you, Mr. Summers,” the Professor said, clasping his hands together on his lap. I narrowed my eyes. No one worried about me. He was lying, he wanted something, he wanted my power, not me. That’s how it always was. “And no, I don’t want your power. I want—”

“Stop _doing_ that!” I put my good hand to my head, raking my fingers through my hair hard enough for it to hurt as I stared at my lap.

“I’m sorry. Sometimes your thoughts can spill over, even when I’m not actively listening. I pick things up,” he said. “I apologize. I will not intrude in your thoughts unless you give me conscious access, I promise.”

I sat and breathed for a moment, silent, head spinning. Reeling.

Jack was gone. I’d killed him. It… it was over. Right? But if it was over, then why was I still here? What could I do now? I had no one. Nowhere to go. I might as well have died back at that laboratory.

And what about Miriam and Vince’s employer? They were still out there. They would find me and kill me, even with Jack gone. I was a dead man walking. Dead kid, whatever.

But then I thought of Alex. Wherever he was. He was still out there. Maybe if I lived, I could find him again someday. No, no—who was I kidding? I couldn’t face him after the things I’d done. I was a murderer. I was a criminal. A threat to society. It was better if I never saw him again.

I missed my parents so much.

“Scott?”

“Huh? I mean, sir?” I jerked my head up, letting my hand fall back to my lap from where it had been pressed against my skull as I turned back to Xavier. He was still weirdly calm. It was freaking me out a bit.

“You’re safe now, son. I won’t let anyone hurt you, and _I_ certainly won’t hurt you. Nor do I want anything from you but for you to have safety and happiness. That’s why I’m offering to adopt you, if you have no other relations to take you in,” he said, and it took me a moment to process his words. Adopt… me?

I thought back to the orphanage, and Rick and Trish Bogart. How happy I was that they wanted to adopt me, and then the massive letdown when they never came for me. I couldn’t let my hopes get up again. This Xavier person wouldn’t like what he saw of me. It would only be a matter of time before he left me, too. Put me back in the orphanage. Either that, or he would break his word and use me the same way Jack had. I couldn’t trust him. How could I trust someone who could get in my head?

“Why can’t I just take care of myself? Jack… Jack taught me, sir. I can get by,” I said. That was a half-truth. I knew how to make a living. Just not legally. And there was no way I was going to be a criminal again if I could help it, so I’d have to figure out how to get a job and stuff. The idea of ever going back to school was a pipe dream for me.

“Unfortunately, even if that were true, you’re still a minor. You’re legally required to have a guardian until you’re at least sixteen. According to what records I could dig up, you’re still fifteen, Scott,” Professor Xavier said evenly. I looked at my lap with a sigh. Damn it. So it was either go along with baldy here or go back to the orphanage. I _couldn’t_ go back there. I _wouldn’t._ Something about that place was just so wrong, and… I couldn’t face Nate again, either.

“I… Why would you want to adopt me, sir? I’m… you’ve seen what I did. I’m nobody. I’m a murderer. I’m damaged goods, too, sir,” I muttered, pointing to my head with my good hand. “That’s why no one wanted me back at the orphanage. Brain-damaged kids never get adopted. Mr. Milbury said so.”

The Professor frowned, and I was afraid I’d said something wrong. That’s all it would take. One wrong word, and he’d abandon me, or hit me, and I’d be alone again. But it was better to be alone, I thought. I couldn’t hurt anyone or be hurt by anyone if I was alone.

“Scott, I know about the plane crash, and I also know that the orphanage in which you spent the greater part of your childhood was not the best place for you. The truth is that I’ve been trying to find you for a long time. Your constant moves made it difficult, but thanks to some technology I created and my FBI connections, I finally managed to catch up with you. Mr. Summers, you are a good person. And a special person. You have great gifts. I want to help you learn to control your gifts and use them for the good of others, if you’ll let me,” he said. I had tensed up at the mention of the FBI. So he was a government goon. He wanted to take me and use my powers. But there was only one other option for me, and I would never, ever go back there. So I would be used again—big deal. I was used to it. _Get over yourself, Summers. You’re a weapon. Get used to it._

“These aren’t _gifts,_ sir,” I said, motioning to my eyes with my hand, still not meeting the Professor’s gaze again. “And if you’re gonna use me, just say so. It’s not like I have anywhere else to go. Adopt me if you want. Just… don’t make me go back to the orphanage. Please, sir.”

I heard the wheelchair roll forward and turned to see Professor Xavier lifting a hand, moving it towards me. I steeled myself for the blow—and then there was just the weight of his hand on top of mine. I flinched at the touch, and he seemed to notice, taking his hand away.

He hadn’t hit me.

“Even though your mutant gifts might not seem that way to you right now, I assure you, there is more to you than just being a weapon or a tool. Do you remember the crane, back in Nebraska?”

“You mean the one I blew to hell, sir?” I asked bitterly. How could I forget? I’d almost become a killer right then and there when my stupid, stupid powers showed up.

“The one you destroyed to save the lives of those around you. I’ve seen footage from that incident, Scott. You used your gifts for good. You can do that again,” he said.

“No, I can’t, sir. If you saw the footage, then you know that there was a mob that tried to kill me. People are scared of me. Scared of you. Scared of… of _mutants._ And frankly, they have every right to be. I _killed,_ Professor. I should go to jail or something. Maybe I won’t be able to hurt anyone in there, sir,” I said, worrying my hand with the thin hospital sheet on my lap, twisting it and still avoiding the Professor’s gaze. It was weird to be able to talk this much. I’d gone days without hardly saying two words to Jack, and he’d always cut me off if I did try and say anything. This was weird. But it was… good weird? No, no. I couldn’t let myself get carried away. Couldn’t let the walls come down.

“You’re a child, Scott. You might have made some mistakes, but everyone does. And in your case, I don’t think you had much of a choice in your situation. As for the general public, you’re right—there is a lot of anti-mutant sentiment rising along with the belief that mutants are more than just an urban legend. The latter is valid; there _are_ more mutants coming into their own these days. You are not alone, Scott. Together, we can fight against the ideas the public has about mutants. We can show them that our powers are the gifts they truly are, and eventually, mutants and normal humans can live alongside each other in peace and harmony. I’d like to help you, son. And I’d like you to help me make this vision a reality,” he said. I listened quietly as he spoke. His voice was gentle, with an English accent that made his words sound more official. Nothing at all like Jack’s voice. As he made his case, I wanted so much to believe him. To trust in him and his words. But I couldn’t—not entirely.

Even so, it wasn’t like I had much of a choice in the matter. I had to go with him. I wasn’t going back to the orphanage. I’d decided that much.

“You’re conflicted, Scott. I understand that. And maybe you’d feel more comfortable with guardianship, rather than adoption. So, I’d like to make a proposition. I will take you into my home until you’re old enough to leave—I think your sixteenth birthday is in a few months, is it not?—and if you’re not satisfied with your new home or me, you can head out on your own once you’re of age. I’ll give you the resources to find a place for yourself, and you’ll never have to see me again if you do not wish it. How does that sound?”

Too good to be true is what it sounded like. Why would anyone offer me charity like that? Freedom like that? Way, way too good to be true. But if it was a lie, it was a pretty bold one. And again, it wasn’t like I had a choice. So I nodded.

“Alright. That… that sounds good, sir,” I said softly, my hand still twisting the sheet in my lap. I finally glanced to the Professor, meeting his eyes through my red-tinted gaze, and he was smiling warmly.

“I’m glad. You still have a few more days of recovery here at least, Scott. I know this environment makes you uncomfortable, but rest assured, I have only trusted hospital staff looking after you. Sympathetic to mutants like ourselves. You have nothing to fear,” Professor Xavier said. I didn’t buy that, but I nodded anyway. “I’m going to call a nurse to get that IV fixed, alright? Would you like me to stay with you, or shall I leave?”

“Um… stay, please,” I found myself saying, glancing down at the tangled IV tubes to the side of my bed. I didn’t trust the Professor entirely, but he didn’t seem like Jack, at the very least. He hadn’t hurt me yet. And I didn’t trust medical people at all. I didn’t want to be alone with one of them. I couldn’t seem to remember why.

“Of course,” Xavier said, and shifted to press a button at the foot of my hospital bed to call a nurse. Within a few moments, there was a knock on the door, and a perky-looking blonde woman entered, dressed in nurse scrubs.

“Hello, there, Scott. Professor. Whoops. Let me fix that up for you,” she said as she noticed the IV and started about replacing it. “Is there anything wrong, besides the IV here? Anything I can get you?” She looked down at me as she fussed with the tubes and untangled them.

Anything she could get me? No one had ever asked what they could do for me. I didn’t know what to say. Thankfully, the Professor seemed to have some ideas, and he spoke up for me.

“Perhaps something to drink, and maybe some food for him as well? I don’t know when he last ate. Scott, would you like anything to read or do while you’re here? Books? Puzzles?” I hesitated for a moment before speaking.

“Uh… books would be nice. I don’t really care what books they are. I’ve, um, never really tried puzzles. We didn’t have a whole lot to do at the orphanage, and Jack… he. Um. Never really…” I trailed off, clearing my throat. God, _Jack._ I couldn’t get his face out of my mind. I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, my heart pounding. The silence was deafening. They were both waiting for me to speak, but I couldn’t open my mouth. All I could see were those diamond eyes staring down at me through the red haze.

“We’ll get you some sudoku books and some crossword puzzles, hm? Thank you, Susan,” I heard the Professor say. I opened my eyes, trying to calm down again. The nurse—Susan, I supposed—nodded with a cheery smile, turning to me.

“Sounds lovely. Alright, Scott. Are you okay? Do you need a moment before I put the IV in again?”

I nodded, breathing in and out deliberately. God, what was _wrong_ with me? I couldn’t get those images out of my head. I don’t know how long I just sat there awkwardly, staring into my lap as Professor Xavier and Nurse Susan remained with me. Finally, I glanced to the nurse and nodded again.

“It’s… it’s okay now, ma’am,” I said.

“Gotcha. There’s going to be a slight pinch. Relax your hand, dear,” she said, and as she took my hand to put in the IV again, I flinched away at her touch before managing to relax as much as I could, which wasn’t much. There was the pinch, and then she taped over the needle before setting my hand back down. “There. All done. I’m going to go get some food and drink for you now, alright, Scott? Be back in a bit.” I nodded silently, and Nurse Susan left the small room, shutting the door behind her.

“Tell me how you’re feeling, Scott,” Professor Xavier said after a few moments of quiet. I shifted in the bed, trying to get more comfortable. How was I supposed to respond to _that?_

“Can’t you just… I dunno, read my mind, sir?” I asked, my voice hollow. I’d never talked about my feelings with anyone before. Robyn had tried, back when she still acted like a human being. But then Toby had died and the Bogarts had disappeared and she’d never gone out of her way for me again like she had before. And so I just never did talk to anyone about anything. People let me down. It was easier not to let them in in the first place.

“I’d rather you tell me, Scott,” Professor Xavier said, wheeling by my side and clasping his hands over his lap. I couldn’t meet his eyes as I thought for a moment. “Just describe your thoughts right now. How you—”

“I can’t, okay? I can’t—I can’t do that right now. Can you just leave me alone, please? I’m sorry. I just… I can’t,” I burst out. “Sir.”

That would be it, wouldn’t it? He would leave and never come back. I’d crossed a line. Jack never would have tolerated such an outburst. _Nice job, Summers._

“I understand. I’ll leave you alone for a bit, and I’ll be back later with some books and activities for you. If you wish to speak with me before then, just call the nurse, and she’ll fetch me. I won’t be far. Why don’t you rest until Susan returns with your food, hm? You’ve had a rough time, son,” Xavier said, and as I looked up in surprise that he hadn’t reacted more angrily, he smiled at me again—not the way Jack had, or Nate had, or Mr. Milbury or anyone else had. I didn’t say anything else as the Professor rolled to the door and left the room and me in silence.

The moment he left, I let out a breath, tilting my head back and staring up at the red-hued ceiling. Oh, god. This was all so much, so fast. But I was so tired, too. Everything still hurt. My eye was still half-swollen shut. I didn’t even know how long I’d been in the hospital already.

I tugged the bedsheet up to my chin and sank down into the pillows, making sure to stay on my back to avoid jostling the glasses. It smelled so sterile here. So unlike the smoke-filled stench of the apartments and hotels I’d stayed in with Jack.

_Jack._

I bit my lip and hugged my good arm around my bad one, shivering slightly. In a rush of silliness, I wished that I still had those pages of the plane book with the SR-71 on them. Stupid. Childish. But Jack hadn’t known I’d kept them, and they were all I had from my time with him that I’d actually chosen to keep.


	8. Xavier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An exchange of father-figures.

When I woke up, there was a tray of food on the little rolling table by my bed, along with a small stack of books and a couple of sharpened pencils. My stomach growled—I couldn’t remember the last time I ate—but I wasn’t hungry. I took the cup of ice water, though, sipping through the little bendy straw that had come with it as I examined the offering of books. On the top of the stack was a magazine-sized sudoku book. I’d heard of it, but never tried it. Picking it up along with one of the pencils, I set it down on my lap and flipped it open, studying the contents. Grids of numbers, some filled in and some blank. Huh. I read the instructions, and it seemed easy enough.

As I sipped the water, I went through the puzzles one after the other, over and over. It was comforting—the repetition of it. The patterns. That’s all it was. Patterns and numbers, and I liked those. I’d completed half the book before realizing that I was out of water and that my stomach wasn’t going to take no for an answer any longer, so I turned to the tray to see what food was there, setting aside my second worn-down pencil for the time being.

The food was simple and bland. Some crackers. A sandwich that I already knew I wasn’t going to touch. A few grapes. I picked up the crackers and gnawed at a few absently, picking up another book, and then another.

_Beyond Good and Evil,_ by Friedrich Nietzsche. _The Once and Future King,_ by T.H. White. _The Art of War,_ by Sun Tzu. A collection of Shakespeare. A biography of Abraham Lincoln. And what should I find on the bottom of the stack but the very same plane book I’d gotten from the library a while back. The crackers in my hand dropped to my lap, and I felt like crying.

It was so silly. Of course it was—it was just a stupid book about stupid planes. But my lower lip trembled as I reached over with my good hand and pulled the book into my lap, flipping it open to the SR-71 pages. It fell open to those pages a little too easily, and in the next moment I could see why. Tucked in between the pristine, new-book pages of the volume were the two torn pages from my torn-up library book, rescued from my pocket and with an added note on expensive-looking ivory paper.

_“I thought you might be interested in this one. - X”_

The Professor. He’d gotten it for me. Tears ran down my cheeks unbidden as I hugged the book and the loose pages close to my chest, shuddering as I sobbed silently.

_Thank you. Thank you._

I read the book for the second time, cover to cover.

The light was fading from the room by the time I worked up the courage to call the nurse in to get her to bring Professor Xavier back. The curtains covering the windows had been drawn before, and when Nurse Susan came in and took my tray, I asked her to open them. The stars were red, but I didn’t mind. Just seeing something outside of the room made me feel a bit better about being in the hospital. Closer to the horizon, there was the skyline of a city. I wondered where I was.

“I see you were busy in my absence, Scott,” Professor Xavier said as he entered the room again, Nurse Susan closing the door behind him. I nodded, looking at the completed sudoku book and the array of others I’d spread on the table. I wasn’t much of a fan of the Shakespeare volume—I’d read some of the mysterious author’s work when I’d still been in school at the orphanage—but I liked Nietzsche well enough and the book about King Arthur, though I hadn’t finished either. I hadn’t gotten around to Sun Tzu yet. I wasn’t that fast of a reader.

“Uh, yes sir. Thank you. For the book. The plane one, sir” I said, looking back at it and its place at the top of the stack. Xavier rolled closer in his wheelchair with a smile, picking up the sudoku book and flipping through it.

“You’re welcome, Scott. And you’ve got quite the knack for this sort of thing, I see,” he said, with a hint of amusement. But it wasn’t condescending, as Jack had always been. “You have a lot of talents.”

I shrugged, but the compliment meant a lot. It was different than anything he or Jack had said about my dumb mutant power. It was _me._ _I_ was talented, he’d said. It wasn’t by benefit of some weird energy that came out of my eyes.

“S-sir, Professor, where am I, exactly?” I asked slowly, hesitantly. The last time I’d asked that question had been to Jack, and I’d paid for it with bruises. But Charles just closed the sudoku book and rolled closer by my side where he’d been before, meeting my eyes. I averted my gaze and looked down at my hand in my lap, fiddling with the sheet again.

“You are in Westchester County, New York at Westchester General Hospital. Not too far from the research facility where I found you,” he replied. I nodded.

“And how long…?”

“Only about a day, Scott. I brought you here immediately last night when I regained consciousness from that blow Winters gave me, and you woke up in the early afternoon today. It’s April 26. A Friday,” Professor Xavier explained. I nodded again. So not as long as I’d thought. I suppose they’d have had to hook me up to more tubes if I’d been there any longer—I was glad I’d woken up when I did. I didn’t want to stick around any longer than absolutely necessary. “You should be free to go tomorrow morning. I’ll return at dawn to take you to my home in Salem Center. We’ll take care of the legal matters there instead of going to any offices. I have some favors I can pull.”

I breathed a sigh of relief at that. I wasn’t interested in hanging around any lawyer’s offices or wherever they hand off custody to orphans like me. I just wanted… what _did_ I want? I’d been so worried about just surviving and staying on Jack’s good side for so long that I hadn’t really thought about what I wanted. I had a feeling the Professor knew that, too.

“T-thank you, sir,” I said, stumbling over my words slightly and clearing my throat to try and break the tension. It hurt my ribs. Better not do that too much.

“Of course, my boy. Now, are you interested in some dinner? You hardly touched your food from earlier,” he said. I still avoided making eye contact.

“Yeah, well. I’m, uh, not that hungry, sir.”

“You need to eat. You’re a growing boy, Mr. Summers. Is there any meal you would want to eat if I brought it to you? I can do better than the hospital food here, you know,” the Professor said. I heard the smile in his voice, the lighter tone. Huh. I’d lived off of fast food for the months I was with Jack. What I’d really want would be—

“I, um. I really like homemade macaroni and cheese. But I understand if—”

“Done,” Professor Xavier said, cutting me off. I bit my lip, and remained silent, waiting for him to continue. “My apologies, Scott—I wasn’t thinking. Is there anything else you want to add before I get that for you?”

I wasn’t expecting that. This Professor Xavier person was surprising me all the time, and… in all the right ways. But I couldn’t let myself be deluded into thinking this would last. I just couldn’t.

“Um, no. It’s fine, sir,” I said, glancing up slightly to see him nod to me, pity flashing across his face.

“Alright. I’ll go and order that for you, and I think I’ll bring back something else that might interest you if you’re up to it this evening,” he said with a wink, rolling his wheelchair away from my bedside. I wondered what that was about. “I shall return shortly, Scott. Rest in the meantime.”

I obliged, settling back into the pillows with a slight sigh as the Professor left my room. I found that I had to go to the bathroom a little after he left, and I noticed gratefully that there was a tiny restroom as a part of the hospital room. I hobbled over with my IV stand in hand, holding my bad arm close to my injured ribs. I looked in the mirror when I’d finished. I looked awful.

My hair was everywhere, and pretty greasy after days without washing. A shower sounded heavenly. My glasses weren’t the ones I’d had before—strange. The Professor must have gotten me new ones somehow, because I doubted the hospital just had ruby quartz lenses on hand. They’d changed me into a short-sleeved, open-back hospital gown, and I turned slightly to see all the damage. My back, like my arms and legs, was bruised and mottled with dark splotches, both old and new. My one eye was still quite swollen, enough so that I could see the dark and raised skin peeking out from behind my glasses. Still, it could have been worse.

I used water from the sink to smooth down my hair a bit before returning to my bed, struggling to get the sheet back over myself with one hand and wincing as I jostled my arm and ribs. The latter were definitely broken, or at least very badly bruised. But it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.

A half-hour doze later, and there was a knock on my door again as Professor Charles Xavier returned with a large tray in hand, as well as a checkered box on his lap. He set the tray down on my side table. It had two portions of mac n’ cheese, along with two glass of water and some bread that looked like it was made fresh. This man had some resources or something. I’d known about him from his papers I’d read at the library about mutants, and from TV, but he must have had a greater pull than I thought to get this stuff in a quick half hour or so.

“There you are. I got some for myself as well. I hope you don’t mind if I join you for dinner, Scott?” He asked, looking at me for permission. _So weird._ Jack had never eaten with me. Never asked me permission for anything. Neither had Nate.

“Um… sure. Sir,” I said, meeting his eyes and then looking away quickly. I saw him smile out of the corner of his eye and take one of the plates from the tray, exchanging it with the checkered box he’d had on his lap. I recognized it as a chess box. “Is that the, uh, surprise?” I asked as I picked at my food, hesitantly taking a bite. It was the best thing I’d eaten in _years._ I dug in as the Professor nodded.

“It is, indeed. Are you interested in a game, Scott? It’s alright if you don’t feel up to it. You’ve had a long day,” he said. That was an understatement. But for once, my head hadn’t been bothering me too much—my usual migraines hadn’t been as noticeable, and I dreaded the reason being that I’d used my powers so much yesterday that it had somehow stopped the headaches for the time being—so I nodded.

“I don’t know how to play, but I’ll do my best, sir,” I said with a shrug through a mouthful of macaroni. _So, so good._ I had a bite of the bread, and that was just as delicious.

“I will teach you, then. It’s an easy game to learn, but it takes a lifetime to master, they say,” Professor Xavier said. He set up the board on the table beside the tray in between bites of his own food, and I watched and listened quietly as he explained the function of each piece as he put it down. It _was_ pretty simple. I’d only ever played checkers with the other kids at the orphanage. This was more complicated in terms of movements, but it was the same concept. Take all of your enemies off the board. Only this time, there was the added function of the king. You get to the king, you win, even if you have more pieces on the board. Strategy. I liked it.

“Now, white always goes first. Would you like to be black or white, Scott?” Professor Xavier asked me. I was studying the board intently, and I looked up as he spoke my name.

“I guess I’ll be white,” I said, finishing off my bread.

We played a slow game as the Professor coached me through some techniques and strategies. He beat me by the time we’d both finished the game, but by that time, I’d also seen all my mistakes and how to fix them the next time.

“Could we, um, play again? If that’s okay?” I asked tentatively, staring down at the board and then glancing at Professor Xavier. He smiled.

“Of course.”

We played again, and he beat me again. I’d fixed my earlier mistakes, but I’d made new ones. I didn’t care. I was learning. I was… having _fun_. Another game. It was completely dark outside by then. That game was the longest, and the closest. I watched the Professor as he furrowed his brow, hand at his chin as he surveyed his soldiers. He wasn’t holding back. I liked that. I didn’t like being talked down to, or treated like a dumb kid, even though I was pretty sure I wasn’t the brightest bulb, especially with my lack of education in recent months. I wondered absently if I’d ever get to go back to school.

The Professor beat me in our third game the same as he’d beaten me in the first and second, but it was obvious how close I’d come to winning.

“Well done, Scott. You’re a natural at this. Very impressive. I’ve had years of practice, and you’ve nearly beaten me on your first day of learning the game,” he said. The compliment filled me with pride, and I felt all warm inside at the remark. _Wow._ I was _good_ at something. It was only a game, though. It wasn’t like it was actually a useful skill that could get me anywhere. “It’s getting late, and I feel you should be well-rested for tomorrow. We’ll leave whenever you’re ready, but I’ll be here at daybreak so that we can head out at your earliest convenience. I know you’re not too fond of this place.”

I helped him put away the chess pieces as much as I could with one good hand, and he took the chess box and the empty tray with our dishes on it to the door.

“Sleep well, Scott. You’re about to embark on a new journey tomorrow.”

And then he was gone, and I was alone.

It took me a while to fall asleep. It was the first time in months I’d been in a real bed as opposed to a couch or the floor, so that was new. But it wasn’t the new comfort that stopped me from sleeping.

I couldn’t get Jack’s face out of my mind. It was still hard for me to even fathom that he was just _gone._ That _I’d_ been the one to kill him. That diamond jaw, fracturing, then disintegrating in front of my eyes, blown away like that crane had been until only shards of him were left. I shuddered and slid further under the thin sheet, pulling it up to my chin.

“I’m sorry, sir,” I whispered into the darkness. Maybe he wasn’t really gone. Maybe he would come right back through that hospital door and grab me and we’d be on the run again and maybe this was all some sort of weird dream—god help me, part of me wished it _were_ just a dream.

I’d never wanted to hurt him, even if he had hurt me. But I was a killer now. A _murderer._

Mom and Dad would be so disappointed in me. I’d betrayed everything. Who the hell was I supposed to be now? The criminal, mutant ward of a big-name scientific mind? That’s pretty much all I was shaping up to be.

Part of me still wished I’d died back there. That Jack had killed me. Maybe then I wouldn’t have become a killer myself. My stomach turned, and I swallowed down bile as Jack’s eyes flashed in my mind. I could still feel his hand on my face, on my throat. My good hand went to my neck, touching the bruised skin there lightly. His words loud in my ears.

I _missed_ him. I knew it was messed up. He’d hurt me. So many times. But I couldn’t help it—he’d given me a chance to live. He’d taken me in. He’d helped me. Maybe I was being too hard on him for all his wrongdoings. Maybe he’d been right. That I’d deserved to die. After all, I hadn’t seen him actually _kill_ anyone, though he’d tried. After all he’d done, and all he’d made me do, I was the one with blood on my hands at the end of the day.

Miriam. Vince. Now Jack, too.

Oh, god.

I closed my eyes, shutting out the red. The last color Jack had ever seen.

_All my fault._

Professor Charles Xavier was making a mistake with me. It was just a matter of time, I told myself, until he saw it too and got rid of me. That would be the smart thing to do. And he seemed like a smart man.

I didn’t deserve anything he gave me. Not the stupid plane book he’d gotten for me, not a home. I turned to the side table and lifted the plane book from its place, flipping through until I got to the crumpled and folded pages of my original copy. I took them out and held them against my chest, sighing. I wasn’t going to cry again, though. I’d done enough of that. I’d been doing it too much. It made me feel so weak. So… not in control.

I fell asleep with the pages held close and with the red stars shining through my window.


	9. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Better than a shitty apartment.

Professor Charles Xavier had brought a selection of clothes for me to choose from when he came for me in the morning. It was the first time in years I’d been able to choose my own clothes—and clothes that actually fit, at that—and at first I was at a loss. There were so many options. I ended up picking out a neat polo shirt and plain khakis. They might have been plain, but they were nicer than anything I’d worn in the past months by far. They even _smelled_ expensive. And _clean._ Professor Xavier said that the polo was a pale green color. I hoped it looked alright. I couldn’t remember if pale green looked good with the color of khakis. But it didn’t really matter to me too much either way. The clothes felt amazing.

He’d gotten me a new watch, too. My old one had run out of battery a while into my time with Jack, and it was wonderful to have one again. I’d always been obsessed with staying on time and having a schedule before, and having a watch on my wrist was like a security blanket of sorts. I could always know what time it was. It was a comfort to me, in its strange way.

The pages of the plane book went into my pocket.

I was discharged at exactly 10:23 AM on Saturday, April 27. I knew, because I had my new watch. My new, very expensive-looking watch. How well-off was the Professor, anyway?

We were chauffeured by a tidy-looking man with a handlebar mustache in a Rolls-Royce. That gave me an even better idea of Professor Xavier’s deep pockets. The car even looked custom. Or were all Rolls custom? I didn’t know. The only car I’d grown at all familiar with was Jack’s old Dodge. And that had been a piece of junk.

“Comfortable, Scott?” The Professor sat beside me, his wheelchair having been folded up and put in the trunk of the car. I nodded.

“It’s really nice, sir. Um, how long is the trip, sir?” I asked, holding my new backpack with all the books and stuff the Professor had gotten me inside on my lap. I nudged it off and let it down by my feet with a clipped grunt of pain as I strained my healing ribs.

“Not long at all. Only about half an hour. Would you like any music? Radio? Mr. Lee here can put on anything you’d like,” Professor Xavier said, nodding to the front of the car. I looked up and saw the chauffeur smile in the rearview mirror.

“N-no, it’s fine. I kinda have a headache, so. I don’t think that would help, y’know, sir?” I said. My head was starting to hurt again. A throbbing pain that started in the back of my head and then worsened just behind my eyes, as if the energy that came out of them was going to blow my eyeballs right out of their sockets if I blinked wrong. It wasn’t too bad yet, but I could feel it getting worse by the minute, ever since I woke up that morning.

“Hm, I see. Well, we have some pain medication for that if you need any, son,” the Professor said. “Just say the word.”

“I’m fine for now, thank you, sir,” I said. And it was true, I thought. My headaches had been worse. I could wait. Besides, I’d gone without medication for my migraines for almost the whole time I spent with Jack. Nothing I couldn’t handle.

Thankfully, we made the trip in silence. I wasn’t in the mood to talk with my head pounding, and Professor Xavier didn’t seem to have gone poking around in my head at all after I’d told him not to do that. Of course, without him saying anything, I wasn’t sure if I could even tell if he was scanning my thoughts or not. But he was silent, and so was I, and I stared out the window and watched the landscape smear by as we drove.

Whenever I closed my eyes for longer than a blink, I saw Jack’s face. I’d slept terribly the night before, not falling asleep for hours as I just lay awake in bed, replaying the events of _that_ night in my head. The light from the chamber. Jack beating me. Me, killing him and shattering him into shards of diamond. I let out a stiff breath, and I heard the Professor shift in his seat, probably looking at the back of my head as I kept my eyes focused on the window. He didn’t say anything, still, but I had the feeling he knew. Mind-invasion or not.

God help me, part of me was _glad_ I’d killed him. That he was gone. I felt like a monster.

I shook my head slightly and let out another breath, trying to clamp down on the feelings and the memories as they kept bubbling up to the surface. They wouldn’t stop. And not just Jack, but Vince and Miriam. Alex. My parents. Toby. My fists were clenched in my lap, and I dug my fingernails into my palms.

_Shut up, shut up, shut up._

Nate’s voice wouldn’t be quiet. He was always talking, running his mouth. His insults blended with Jack’s, ringing all-too-familiar. I bit the inside of my mouth, hard, trying to distract myself. My headache was worsening. I closed my eyes, squeezing them shut—I could feel my blood pounding in my eyelids, in my skull—each beat of my heart was a blow from Jack, the thunk of Nate’s tennis ball against the wall, the creaking of the plane as it broke apart—

“Scott.”

“Uh?” I whirled around in my seat a little too fast, wincing as my shoulder shifted uncomfortably as I turned to the Professor. “Sir?”

“Your thoughts were very loud just now. I couldn’t help but pick some of them up. Are you alright? Do you need us to stop for a bit?” Professor Xavier glanced to the front of the car towards Mr. Lee, the driver, who met his employer’s gaze with a nod. I felt my face grow hot, embarrassed.

“N-no. No, it’s fine. I’m fine. Just… never mind, sir,” I muttered, drawing my knees together and unclenching my fists in my lap, smoothing down my pant legs with my good hand. The Professor shifted again.

“Don’t be afraid to speak your mind, Scott. There is no judgement here. And I’d like to help you with your trauma. You haven’t lived an easy life, son,” he said.

“It’s not… it’s not trauma. It’s fine. Other kids have had it way worse, anyway, sir,” I said, my tone clipped and curt. I didn’t want to talk about it _now_ , even if I had wanted to talk about it in the first place. Which I didn’t. I hoped the Professor wouldn’t take offense with my tone. _Stupid, Summers. Stupid. Rude and stupid._

But he didn’t hit me. I kept expecting him to react like Jack would have, with boisterous words and fists, but he never did.

“Just because other people might be supposedly ‘worse off’ doesn’t make your own feelings and experiences any less valid, Mr. Summers. If you should ever feel the need to confront those feelings and those memories, I will be there for you.”

Huh.

“Yessir,” I said softly, turning back to the window again as my head continued to ache.

“And here. Before you get too caught up in the scenery again,” I heard the Professor say, with the sound of a water bottle opening and the rattle of pills. I glanced over my shoulder and reluctantly faced him again as I took the water and washed down a couple of over-the-counter pain pills. “For your migraine. It’s not a weakness to ask for help, Scott. It’s a strength.”

“Right. Sir,” I muttered, placing the bottle into the cupholder between us and returning to my survey of the passing landscape. Our surroundings were becoming more rural as we drove, less populated. More green with spring instead of the cold, rigid faces of the city buildings in the greater Westchester area.

Almost exactly half an hour after we’d left the hospital, we arrived at a wrought iron gate, topped with a serifed “X” in a circle of metal. Beyond the gate, a long driveway that was lined with impeccable landscaping. Mr. Lee drove us on through the gate, and I admired the fountains, the greenery, the flowers, the trees. It was beautiful. This… was Professor Xavier’s? All of it?

The great building itself was a mansion that looked like it drew from several eras of architecture. The only elements I really recognized were the gothic arches, and the more modern stone siding and grecian columns in the front. Parts of it were crawling with English ivy, but otherwise it was in perfect condition, with two even wings spreading from the center hall where the main double doors were located.

Mr. Lee drove us to the front, where he helped the Professor into his wheelchair as I got out of the car and gawked at the opulence. I was going to live _here?_ It looked like a damn museum. Which wasn’t a bad thing, in my book.

“I hope you aren’t too intimidated, Scott. This home has been in my family for generations. It’s quite empty as of yet, but it’s clean and spacious. I have had a room set up for you in the east wing, but if that isn’t to your liking, we can have you moved somewhere else,” Professor Xavier said. I only half-heard him as I hefted my backpack onto my good shoulder, still admiring the landscape. It was like paradise. This couldn’t be real. Someone this rich could never be interested in helping someone like me. But here I was. “Come, Scott. Let me show you to your room. Mr. Lee will be taking the Rolls to the garage onsite.”

I finally focused again, following the Professor as we approached the ramp by the set of stairs that let to the front doors. As Professor Xavier started to roll himself up the ramp, I took the handles of his wheelchair and started pushing, mainly using my good arm.

“Thank you, son,” Professor Xavier said.

“Oh, um. Sorry. I was just trying to help, sir. If you’d rather… uh…”

“Nonsense. I’m glad to have your assistance, Mr. Summers. I’ll direct and you drive, yes?” He looked at me over his shoulder with a smile that reassured me some. My hands were sweating on the handlbars—god, I hope I was doing the right thing here. I didn’t want to mess this up like I seemed to with everything else.

“Yessir,” I said with a nod, and we continued through the front doors and into the main hall, with me pushing the Professor’s wheelchair. My mouth fell open for the second time that day as I took in the hall. “Whoa…” I breathed, scanning the paintings on the walls, the old hardwood flooring, the Persian rug in the middle of the floor, the busts on pedestals and the cabinets full of fancy antiquities. It was like stepping into a castle.

“Take a right down this hall. Your room should be the first one there—ah, here it is. Is it to your liking, Scott?”

We entered a large room with a huge bay window at the far end, where the ledge was cushioned and the curtains were drawn aside to let the sunlight of the morning stream through. There was a bed with its headboard against the wall in the middle of the room, at least a queen size, maybe a king—I wasn’t exactly an expert on bed sizes—but it was big. Across from it was a set of two dressers, one with a tilting mirror attached. Further into the room, there was a bookcase and a desk close by one another, and by the door where we’d entered was a wardrobe to our left against the wall.

“T-this… this is all mine, sir?” I asked, my voice wavering as I let the handles of the wheelchair go and stepped aside from the Professor to enter the room. It was _huge._ At least twice as big as the best apartment or hotel room Jack and I had ever lived in on its own—I flinched at Jack’s memory, letting my head fall slightly.

“Yes, this is yours, if you find that it suits you. There are other rooms in the house as well. Too many, sometimes, it feels,” Professor Xavier said with a light chuckle. “Awfully empty. But I’m hoping to fill those rooms soon enough with other… students like yourself.”

I turned from observing the room, looking down at the professor and adjusting my backpack on my shoulder.

“Um. Other students? You’re going to take in more kids?” Oh. Well. On the one hand, I had let myself foolishly believe that I was somehow special for Professor Xavier to have expressed an interest in adopting me— _stupid, Summers, stupid—_ and that stung. But on the other hand, having some company other than a middle-aged professor dude sounded nice in a house this empty. It was a little weird how empty it was. Haunting. Like the orphanage when I was left behind that one time when the others went on a field trip together.

“Yes and no, Scott. You see, you are not the only mutant out there who has trouble with their powers. Nor are you the only one in need of sanctuary, even among those who have parents and whose parents accept them for who they are. What I’m looking to accomplish here is to bring a group of bright young mutants together to train them in the use of their mutant gifts, to make a difference as a team and show the world at large that we can be a force for good. You are the first, but there will be others,” he explained, rolling forward until we were only about a meter apart. I looked away. “But Scott, that does not mean that I will ever turn you away. This is your home now, for as long as you want it to be. Do you understand?”

A team of mutants, huh? What, like the Avengers? Ha. We’d be run off the streets in two shakes, if the public figured out we were mutants and not just some people who did some wacky experiments or made some nifty tech to get our powers. We’d be stoned or lynched, like I’d seen of other mutants who’d been outed in the news. We’d be dead before we could ever even do anything.

“I mean, sorta. Sir,” I said quietly, turning away and clutching the strap of my backpack.

“What can I do to better explain? What would you like me to elaborate on, Scott?”

I hesitated for a moment before turning back to face him.

“I guess I just don’t really see the point. Normal people hate us. And… shouldn’t they? I mean. I’m a murderer, Professor Xavier. My power isn’t helpful unless you want to destroy a building without explosives, or… or kill a man made of living diamond. I’m a freaking _monster._ What good will being out in the open in some little team do, sir? Maybe we should just… lay low. Hide. I dunno,” I said with a shrug. “Sorry, sir,” I added, biting my lip. If I didn’t go along with what he wanted, would he throw me out?

“No need to apologize, Scott. I understand your hesitation. But I need you to understand that you are _not_ a monster. You are a boy, on your way to becoming a man. You have a good heart, but this world hasn’t been good in turn to you. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you never wanted to do any of the things Jack Winters made you do, didn’t you?” He spoke firmly, but gently, and then waited for me to respond. I took a moment.

“Well, no, sir.”

“You felt bad about the illegal things he forced you to do.”

“Yessir.”

“Scott, even if you _didn’t_ regret the actions you had to take under duress, even if you _did_ take pleasure in the criminal life that man forced you into, I would be offering you the same things I am now. A home. A new life. You see, I believe in second chances. Mutants haven’t been given even their first chance. I’d like to put this team together and make that happen. Give them—give _you_ —that chance. I want the world to see that we are not to be feared—that we are people who believe in what’s right, and who will fight for those who cannot fight for themselves. Scott, _you_ are one of those people. You are firm in your beliefs in what is right and wrong. It hasn’t taken me long to pick up on that from you. I can’t make you decide which path you take, but I can offer you options. Scott, I believe that you _do_ want to help people. You just don’t know how. And first, you have to help yourself,” Professor Xavier said. I looked down at my feet, my backpack strap starting to slide from my shoulder. I hefted it up again, and there was a twinge of pain in my ribs at the movement. “Scott… Son, you have to let me help you.”

“C-can I… have a minute? Sir? I’m sorry. Just. Please, sir,” I mumbled, backing away a few steps but still avoiding meeting his gaze.

“Take your time. Settle in, Scott. I’m going to go ahead and start working through the legalities of becoming your guardian with my good friend Duncan who should be arriving soon. We’ll be through the main hall towards the west wing, in my office. Third door down on the left,” the Professor said, and turned his wheelchair to exit the room, leaving the door open behind him. I watched the back of his chair as he left, and then slowly stepped forward to shut the door behind him after he’d gone down the hall a ways.

I was alone.

With a heavy sigh, I dropped my backpack by the door, hearing the books inside _thunk_ together, and immediately jogged forward despite the bruises and pains and leapt onto the huge bed, flipping over onto my back as I fell onto the soft duvet. I stared up at the red-tinged ceiling, mouth slightly open as I just lay there and breathed, the sun from the window warming my face. It smelled old in this place, but it was clean-old, and not crusty-and-moldy-old like some of the apartments I’d lived in over the past months.

“So… take inventory, Summers,” I muttered to myself, eyes locked onto the lazily-spinning fan on the ceiling. “What the hell is going on with your life? You have someone who wants to help you. Mind-reading, wheelchair-wielding bald dude. And he wants you to help _him._ Be on some sort of mutant Avengers team or something. Okay.”

I kicked off my shoes off the side of the bed and scooted all the way onto it, letting my long legs and good arm splay out. Wow, that felt good. I’d been relegated to cramped couches and the too-small bunk at the orphanage longer than I could remember. This was heavenly.

“I mean, I wanna help people. But I’m… I’m…” _Afraid_. All I could think of was the mob that had ganged up on me and chased me out of Omaha when my powers first developed. My stupid, destructive, killing powers. I didn’t want to ever use them again. I never wanted to take off my glasses again. If I took off my glasses, ever, I could kill again, and I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t.

I closed my eyes with a sigh, shutting out the red.

What would my parents have wanted me to do? What would they think of me if… if I had something to offer the world, but I held myself back just because I was too much of a pussy to do anything with it?

“Be a man, Summers. Just… Man up already. What would J—”

Jack wouldn’t say anything at this point. He’d just beat me and burn me with the ends of his cigarettes. And if he did say anything, it would just be curses spewing from his mouth.

Images flashed in my mind behind my closed eyelids.

Diamond eyes. Jack looming over me, grinning like a shark.

I opened my eyes to try and dispel the images, but then all I could think of was when I’d had my eyes open and I was looking at Jack as he burst apart in front of my damned eyes.

Shit, shit, shit.

Pain. Fists and feet raining down on me.

Cold hands at my throat. Couldn’t breathe.

I curled into a ball, panting, my good hand clawing at my hair as I tucked my body inwards as if to fend off against the blows.

_“You good for nothin’, pussy-ass bitch!”_

_“You fuckin’ bastard kid!”_

_“Motherfuckin’ waste of space, get out of my sight!”_

His eyes were so _cold_. Even before they’d turned hard and vacant by the diamond.

_“You owe me EVERYTHING, you hear, boy? Your fuckin’ life and all of it! You OWE me!”_

I was shaking and I couldn’t breathe and my eyes were squeezed shut as I gasped on the bed, trying to pull Jack’s fingers from my throat, but I couldn’t move my hand, and my heart was racing so fast I couldn’t count the beats, couldn’t count—one, two—one, two—oh, god, oh, god I was _dying_ and he was _killing me_ and maybe it was better that way, maybe it was better I died, couldn’t disappoint anyone, couldn’t kill anyone else, couldn’t hurt anyone else, and maybe the pain would stop, maybe it would all just _stop_ and—and—

* * *

“Breathe, Scott. That’s a good boy. There we go. Focus on my voice. You’re safe. You’re alright. You’re here with me, Doctor Robyn Hanover. You feel that under your feet? That’s solid ground. You’re not falling, Scott. You’re not on fire. Look at me and breathe. In and out. One, and two. In, and out. There we go.”

I felt the floor under my feet.

I saw Robyn’s face, concerned, but calm. How could she be calm? The plane—it was burning—falling! I was falling—but no, I wasn’t. I was there. In the orphanage nurse’s office.

I breathed, gasping at first, and then more slowly and deliberately as I focused on the now, meeting Robyn’s honey-brown eyes.

“Good job, Scott. Excellent. You’re doing great,” she said, smiling at me. I felt her hands on my shoulders as she crouched in front of me, grounding me with her touch.

“S-sorry…” I mumbled through heavy breaths, suddenly averting my gaze and looking at the floor. She reached out and tilted my chin back up to meet her eyes again.

“You have nothing to apologize for, Scott. You were having a panic attack. They aren’t so uncommon. You know, back when I was your age, I had them, too. You’re not alone, dear.”

“B-but none of the other kids…”

“Maybe not when you can see them. Scott, you had a traumatic experience a few years ago. These attacks aren’t unnatural. You just need to learn some coping mechanisms to help you through them, especially when someone like me isn’t around to help. So, step one. Breathe, like you’re doing now,” Robyn said, nodding along as I took deep breaths in and out. My heart wasn’t racing quite as fast as it had anymore. I was feeling a bit better.

“Okay,” I said.

“Good. Step two, ground yourself. That doesn’t necessarily mean on the _ground_ ground. Just find something in your environment to focus on, and remind yourself that whatever happened in the past is over. That you’re safe, and that you can overcome those thoughts that might seem overwhelming. Like… here. See that poster on the wall back there?”

“The… weird naked man?”

“Eh, Vitruvian Man. Actually, scratch that. Look at that right there. The window. Look outside and see that tree in the courtyard. Focus on that tree. You see it?” She pointed out the window, and then looked back at me. As she was speaking, I was finding it easier to feel normal in my own skin again. I could breathe again. The shaking had mostly stopped.

“Yeah.”

“Keep looking at that something in your environment. Remember where you are, and when you are. Be in the moment, and keep breathing. Count all the way to four on each breath once you get into the one-two rhythm. One, two, three, four. That’s it, Scott.”

_One, two, three, four._

In.

_One, two, three, four._

Out.

“You are one fast learner, Mr. Summers! Great job. How are you feeling right now, scale of one to ten?”

“Um…”

_One, two, three, four._

“Like, maybe a five?”

“What were you a few minutes ago?”

“Maybe a two, I guess. I don’t want to complain or anything, though.”

“It’s not a matter of complaining. It’s a matter of measuring your state of mind and your recovery progress. You’re pretty logically-minded, Scott. Focus on the numbers. Know what number you’re feeling, and keep track of it. Okay?”

“Okay.”

_One, two, three, four._

_One, two, three four._

* * *

_One, two, three four._

_One, two, three four._

I stared at my backpack sitting on the floor by the closed door of the room.

_One, two, three, four._

I breathed, struggling to center myself, but remembering what Robyn had taught me before she’d become someone else. A shadow of her former self.

I didn’t know how long it was until I was feeling at about a five or so again from my previous two as I lay curled in the fetal position on the bed. I checked my watch when I could finally move without shaking too much again—almost noon.

Another few minutes went by as I finally regained control and sat up, letting out a shuddering sigh as I combed back my hair from my forehead. It was sticky with sweat. I _really_ needed a shower.

“I’m fine. You’re fine,” I mumbled, still counting my breaths. The images still flashed in my head, the nightmare was still real, but I wasn’t at that facility anymore. It wasn’t that night when I’d become a killer anymore. I was… safe. I was… home? At the very least, I was in _a_ home, if not my own. Better than nothing.

My fingers went to my pocket, and I tugged out the pages of the SR-71, unfolding them and smoothing out the hard creases on the bed beside me. I paused a moment, and then slid off the edge of the mattress, swaying slightly and still shaky on my feet as I propped up the pages by the mirror on the one dresser. Maybe the Professor had some tape or something I could use to put the torn pages back together.

After a few more minutes of recovery, pacing around the room, looking outside the bay window and admiring the view, I was feeling much better. The Professor and his friend—Duncan, was it?—would probably be waiting on me still.

I shuffled myself back into my shoes and opened my door to the wide hallway, wandering down to the main entryway hall and keeping to the left as I counted the doorways to the west wing. Three. There. The door was open, and I heard warm voices conversing as I slowly peered around the edge of the doorjamb to see Professor Xavier seated at a large desk and the back of an unknown man’s head, the owner of which was sitting across from Xavier on the opposite side of the desk with his back to me. That must have been Duncan.

The Professor noticed me—I saw it in his eyes as they flickered briefly towards me—but he didn’t make my presence known to Duncan. He let me take my time as I turned away from the room and pressed my back against the wall outside the door for a few moments, calming myself down. _You’re fine. Everything is fine._

When I finally deemed myself ready enough to face the stranger, I knocked on the doorjamb before stepping inside the room. The voices ceased, and Duncan turned to face me. He was a traditionally handsome man, about as old as the Professor, in middle age. His hair looked light through my red filter, the same as his eyes.

“Why, hello there, young man. You must be Scott Summers. Pleasure to meet you, kiddo,” Duncan said with a grin, standing up and extending a hand for me to shake. He didn’t notice me flinch at the fast movement of his arm.

“Um… yessir,” I said after a beat of silence, finally reaching forward to take his hand with my good one. His grip was firm. My palm was sweaty. As he released my hand, I hurriedly brought it back down to my side, wiping it against my pant leg. Again, he didn’t seem to notice my discomfort. Maybe it was better Professor Xavier was a telepathic mutant after all, being able to pick up on what made me uncomfortable and making a point to avoid those stressors.

“Have a seat, Scott. We’re just finishing up. A couple more documents to sign, and you’ll be under my wing unless you decide otherwise when you turn sixteen,” the Professor said, gesturing to the empty seat beside Duncan. As Duncan sat down again, I pulled my seat over a bit so I wouldn’t be too close to him, hoping he wouldn’t notice the added distance too much. I sat.

Duncan was one of Professor Xavier’s FBI connections, I learned in the following conversation. A normal human aware of mutants, and of the Professor’s status as a mutant. I inferred that he knew about me, too. The discussion felt more like a formality than anything. Papers were exchanged and signed, filed away into Duncan’s slim briefcase by the feet of his chair, and hands were shaken. It was all something of a blur to me by the time Duncan finally packed up his things and left out the front door.

It was just me and the Professor now.

As Professor Xavier waved to his friend as the latter drove off down the long driveway to the gate, he turned to me, expertly maneuvering his wheelchair.

“How are you feeling, Scott? I noticed some distress in your thoughts earlier. Is everything alright?”

I hesitated to respond right away, shuffling uncertainly as I looked down at my feet.

“It’s fine. Just… getting used to things, sir. Is there, um, a shower or something I can use? I haven’t showered since, uh… A while ago, sir,” I said, avoiding his questions. If he noticed, which I’m sure he did, he didn’t mention it as he ushered me back inside the house and down the hall of the east wing where my room was located. We passed my door, and in the middle of the hallway was a door with a metal “M” on the front. On the other side of the hallway was one with a “W.”

“This is the men’s washroom. Showers and sinks. Check your top dresser drawer of the one closest to your room door—there should be all the toiletries you need in there already for you. Towels are just inside here in the linen closet to your right,” Professor Xavier said, pushing open the bathroom door and nodding to the linen closet door. Everything was so fancy. It was like a hotel. A nice one, anyway. “If there’s anything else I can get you, just let me know. I have a cleaning and housekeeping service come in twice a week, but we’re usually fairly self-sufficient here. Hard to make a mess when there’s only one man in the house, eh? And now there are two. I trust you can take care of yourself, Scott?” He searched my face as he spoke, letting the door fall closed again.

“I mean, uh, yessir. I can. Thank you, sir,” I mumbled, clearing my throat as my voice cracked and caught. Damn it. The Professor smiled evenly at me, slightly amused.

“Once you’ve cleaned up, feel free to explore the grounds at your leisure, Scott. I have the feeling you’d rather figure things out on your own than be subject to a guided tour. The kitchen is just down the main hall and to your left, should you find yourself needing lunch,” he said. I nodded, about to turn away. “Oh, and Scott—?” I stopped, shoving my hands in my pockets as I faced him again. Was I in trouble? I must have messed up somehow. Shit. I knew it. “Make sure you have lunch. You need food. I know you might not be hungry, but force yourself to eat something anyway, alright? Could you do that for me?”

“Yessir,” I said automatically, nodding again. He was right—I wasn’t hungry, even though it was noon and even though I’d only had orange juice for breakfast. Professor Xavier smiled at me again, turning in his chair and starting back down the hall, leaving me to my own devices.

“I’ll be in my office, should you need me, Scott. I’ll leave you be now,” he said over his shoulder. I ducked into my room immediately, grabbing the soap and other stuff from my dresser drawer. Searching the wardrobe, I found it fully stocked in everything from robes to suits. All in my sizes. _Wow._ I tugged a pale bathrobe from a hanger, hoping it wasn’t actually as pink as it looked through my glasses, and folded it over my arm as I carried the rest of my bathroom supplies in a little folding tote that had been in the dresser drawer with the other toiletry items.

The washroom, or bathroom, or whatever it was was just as nice as the rest of the house. It had an older feel to it, but the furnishings and faucets were modern and worked like a charm. I managed to get my arm out of my sling with minimal discomfort, doffing my clothes Xavier had gotten me and stepping into one of the shower stalls, drawing the curtain by force of habit.

Along with the toiletries in the dresser drawer, there had also been a pair of what looked like ruby quartz goggles of some sort, with a strap along the back and soft rubber lining the lenses. I exchanged my new glasses Xavier had provided for this second pair, carefully holding the ones I knew worked in front of the goggles just in case I blasted through the lenses. Nothing happened.

Sighing in relief, I tried on the goggles. They fit snugly on my face, and I wondered how the Professor had gotten all this information about me. Well, I supposed he _was_ a telepath.

I carefully scrubbed my face, washing my battered and bruised body and careful not to jar my arm or ribs any more than necessary. They’d taken off the bandages around my ribs—said that applied pressure for too long could create breathing problems or something—so moving and turning was slightly painful. The ribs would heal on their own in time, they’d said.

After a shower that was probably way too long and used up most of the mansion’s hot water, I finally got out and put on the bathrobe—it was _amazing._ It was soft and just the right size and I just melted right into the towel-like fabric as I took off the goggles and exchanged them for my usual glasses as I finished cleaning myself up.

I shaved the pubescent stubble on my chin, brushed my teeth, combed my hair, all one-handed. Satisfied, I stood back from the mirror, admiring my reflection in the still-steamed surface from the hot shower I’d taken.

I still looked like hell. Still bruised, still looking like I just got mugged. But I looked better. That was something.

Returning to my room, I sorted through the clothes the Professor had provided, opting to change into something fresh, rather than returning to the clothes I’d been wearing before. I’d tossed those into the laundry chute I’d found in the bathroom before coming back to my room.

There were some more casual clothes that looked like they all came from a catalogue—Professor Xavier obviously hadn’t been shopping for kids’ clothes in some time—but they were all quite nice. All new. Nothing like what I was used to at all.

I’d noticed that there were labels on each hanger and in the dresser drawers to denote color. It had all been sorted. Looking back to where I’d grabbed the bathrobe, I now saw the label, “White,” on the hanger from which I’d taken it. Fantastic. I almost felt like crying again. It was such a small thing, but it meant so much.

After exploring my options, I settled on something more casual—a “Black” t-shirt that fit more tightly than I was used to, but was probably the right size for once, and “Blue” jeans that I could tell were slightly darker than the hue of the shirt. Simple enough. I grabbed some socks and tugged on the pair of Converse shoes I’d found in my room among a rack of other shoes, and I felt like a new person. Fresh. Clean.

I looked at myself in the mirror of the dresser, glancing down at the SR-71 pages briefly, and studied myself. I wasn’t much to look at, even with some proper clothes and hair that wasn’t greasy and matted anymore. Still looked beat-up and tired. Still skinny as a twig.

That thought reminded me of the kitchen, and I supposed I might as well abide by the Professor’s request and eat something. I wasn’t hungry even then.

Wandering into the kitchen, my eyes widened as I saw the looming refrigerators, the ovens, the microwaves, the stovetops. Multiple of each. Enough to cater to an army, it seemed like. I didn’t know the first thing about cooking besides boiling water—life on a fast food diet and cafeteria food did that to a person—so I just raided one of the fridges and pulled out a container of deli meat. Nothing seemed particularly appetizing to me, but I figured protein would be the best way to go if I absolutely _had_ to eat something. So I ate a few slices before replacing the container, and set about exploring the mansion grounds on my own.

It was slow going, since I didn’t want to jar my injuries more than necessary, and there was a lot of ground to cover. I first surveyed the hall where my room was located, peeking into the other rooms and finding that each of the others were similarly furnished as mine was, but without the clothes and stuff in the dressers and wardrobes. Empty. There were a couple studies on the same hall as well, each equipped with state of the art computers and with bookshelves loaded with volumes of books. I’d have to go back there later. There were closets galore, and at the end of the east wing hall was what looked like a sort of lounge, with a television and a stereo system, along with a pinball machine, a pool table, and a ping-pong table. All sorts of cool stuff in there.

In the west wing, there were more offices—I slunk by Professor Xavier’s office quietly, not wishing to disturb him. Most were quite sparse, others had boxes of manila folders stacked inside. There were several larger rooms that looked like they’d been converted into some sort of classroom, and I remembered what the Professor had said about more students. Would I be going back to a normal school, or would I be staying here? I honestly wasn’t sure which appealed to me more. I’d have liked to return to school at one point, bullies and terrible teachers aside, but it didn’t seem like possibility to me anymore. Not as a _mutant._ Not when I could blow the whole school to hell in a heartbeat if someone knocked off my glasses.

I turned away from the classrooms and continued to explore the mansion.

There must have been two libraries on top of the studies. Computer rooms with anything and everything you could imagine. Exercise rooms. More lounges. Living rooms and even what looked like a miniature movie theater. I had thought I was done exploring the mansion itself when I noticed the elevators and the stairs that were in the main entryway hall. I’d forgotten. There was more than just one level to this place. It was massive.

Upstairs, the layout was similar, with bedrooms and studies, along with a bigger common area that had an open floor plan above where the entry hall was downstairs. I liked it there. The room was lined with windows, letting the sun bleach the floorboards and warm the couches. I sat in there for a while, just soaking in the sunlight. It felt good.

There was an upstairs bar as well, but instead of alcoholic drinks, there were just sodas in the mini fridge. I popped one open and took it with me as I continued along.

If there was one thing the mansion wasn’t lacking, it was bathrooms. Which was good, I supposed.

On the third floor up, there was a loft area along with a bright, round room in the middle of the floor plan with sunroofs making up the ceiling. It was beautiful. There were a few plants there, with dry soil. Some of the leaves were browning. That wouldn’t do. I found a watering can and filled it at a nearby sink and watered the plants dutifully before leaving the top floor and circling back down to the main level.

I wondered briefly what the Professor would do if I just ran away as I started to head outside to look at what the rest of the grounds had to offer. I didn’t think he would let me go far, anyway. He’d found me once, when I—or Jack, rather—hadn’t wanted to be found. He could probably do it again.

The thoughts didn’t last long as I felt my mind flash back to my time under Jack, and I distracted myself with observing the basketball courts in the extensive backyard. There were tennis courts, too, and a large pond that had a fountain in the middle. Ducks glided by on the surface lazily.

There were some gardens in the back, though not anything particularly exotic. More woodland, with a pine straw path through the trees and bushes of flowers. I explored back there for a while, just letting myself wander.

All of it was beautiful.

When I finally finished looking around at the pool, the garage, the stables, and the front of the mansion with the fountains and the intimidating architecture, it was exactly 6:03 PM as I arrived back in the main entry hall.

The Professor was waiting for me, and almost scared the shit out of me as I noticed him sitting there with a start.

“Sorry to startle you, Scott. I could feel your mind coming back here, and I decided to meet you here. Would you care for some dinner?”

“I, um. Sure, I guess, sir,” I said with a shrug of my good shoulder. “Your place is really nice, sir,” I said as he led us to the kitchen and dining area. I smelled food, already hot and ready. Huh. Did the Professor cook or had someone come in for him?

“Thank you. It’s a lovely place, but rather lonesome for now, wouldn’t you say?”

“I s’pose, sir,” I said. Professor Xavier led me to one of the large dining room tables adjacent to the kitchen, where dishes of food were laid out already. “Did you…?”

“Oh, no. I have a cook who comes in for dinner meals from time to time. Her name is Rose. She’s a master at what she does. I hope you like steak and potatoes? I tried to keep it simple, since I’m not certain about your tastes,” he said as he took a place where a plate was laid out, but where there wasn’t a chair to obstruct him as he rolled his wheelchair into place. I sat at the only other place laid out across from him at the end of the table, feeling a little anxious as I took my seat. It felt so formal, like I was being evaluated for etiquette as I sat at the pristine table with the Professor. I felt underdressed in my t-shirt and jeans.

“Are you religious, Scott?” I looked up as I was about to help myself to one of the steaks on the platter between us. Oh, shit. I hadn’t been thinking. I hadn’t said grace over food since… since my parents. I remembered. We used to do that. We’d held hands.

“S-sorry, sir. I wasn’t thinking,” I said, leaving the dish and clasping my hands on my lap as I bowed my head.

“You misunderstand me. I was asking if you are religious, not if you’d like to join me in prayer. You are welcome to if you are so inclined, but I will never make you subscribe to a belief system in which you have no interest,” Professor Xavier said.

“Oh. Well. Um. No, I’m not really religious… anymore. I’ve tried praying, but it’s not like I’ve heard anything back, y’know? Sir,” I said, biting my lip as I looked up again, fiddling with the edge of the tablecloth in front of my lap. The Professor nodded.

“I’m spiritual, I would say, but not necessarily religious. I believe in a higher power, but I consider myself non-denominational. Would you like to join me in prayer, or no? It is fine if you don’t, Scott. I won’t be offended,” he assured me. Well, what was the harm in trying again? Maybe some of my prayers _had_ been answered. After all, Jack was… Jack was gone. And I had a roof over my head that didn’t look like it would cave in if the neighbors partied too hard upstairs.

“I’ll… I’ll join you, sir,” I said, and Professor Xavier smiled and nodded warmly.

“Very well. Simply bow your head, if you please.” I did, and he continued. “Dear lord, thank you for your graciousness and for bringing Scott into my home. I pray that he knows that my home is his now, and that he grows to be comfortable here, and that he will learn that I am a friend, like you, O Lord. Help me to guide him on the path of righteousness, and help him overcome his inner demons as he learns and grows as a person. And of course, Lord, thank you for this wonderful food before us.” There was a pause, and I glanced up as the Professor met my eyes through my glasses. “Scott? Do you have anything you’d like to say?”

I lowered my head again, and cleared my throat. My ribs hurt.

“Th-thank you for, um, giving me a chance. I’m, uh… glad I didn’t die back, um. Back there. Amen?” I said hesitantly, my stomach turning a bit. I’d completely screwed that up, hadn’t I?

“Amen,” Xavier said, more sure of himself than I was. I looked back up, and he smiled at me again. “Thank you for joining me, Scott. Please, help yourself to the food. You need to keep up your strength.”

The meal was a quiet one after the prayer that I was sure I’d butchered. God probably hated me even more now. Couldn’t even pray right. As we were finishing up, I dared to ask a question.

“Professor, sir, am I going to be able to go back to school? Or at least take classes again? I get it if you don’t want to let me or anything, but… You’ve been so, um. So kind to me, sir,” I mumbled, staring down at the napkin I’d spread over my lap.

“I’m glad you asked, Scott. I’m not sure public school would be the best thing for you, so I’ve already made arrangements to have tutors come in. I can teach you some things, but I’m not a professor in every subject, after all,” he said, humor in his tone.

“Tutors, sir?” I echoed, glancing up and rearranging my silverware on my empty plate. It was the most I’d eaten all day. Hell, the most I’d eaten in months, I’d guess. I’d been careful not to take too much food to begin with, since I still wasn’t that hungry, but I’d always made sure to clean my plate. Now was no different.

“Yes. And Scott, you have nothing to fear from them. I have screened all my staff as to their views on mutants. No one will persecute you under my roof. Trust me on that, son,” Professor Xavier said firmly.

“You… looked into their minds?”

“Somewhat, yes. I’ve been fairly close with all of my tutor staff for years, but during conversation and during interviews for their positions, I make sure to run a telepathic screen of sorts, to judge whether their intentions are true and that they harbor no ill-will towards mutants,” he said. I shifted in my seat slightly. I didn’t feel quite alright with that, but I suppose it made sense. As long as he wasn’t, like, digging through their thoughts or anything. I was probably better off not knowing.

“Okay, sir,” I said. I’d never had a tutor before—at least one that wasn’t Nate at the orphanage when I needed help with my science homework. I wondered how this was going to work.

“We won’t be starting classes for you until you’re ready, so try not to worry about it. Either way, your curriculum will primarily be driven at your own pace, so it shouldn’t be terribly stressful. How does the fall semester sound?” Professor Xavier asked, finishing his last bite of steak and dabbing genteelly at the corners of his mouth with his cloth napkin. I shrugged. Truth be told, it sounded kind of how things had been with Jack. Spending my days doing nothing but worrying. I read, I watched TV, I kept up with the news, and I never left our lodgings except to shop for the lists of supplies Jack had written down for me while he was off doing who knows what. It was quiet, and it was also mind-numbing.

“Sounds fine, Professor,” I said.

“There is more to do here than you might think, Scott. Work to be done. You need to be kept busy—I can see that much—and no one said that I can’t instruct you on my own before you begin tutoring sessions,” he replied. I shifted uncomfortably. He’d had to have scanned my thoughts to reply like that, right? At least he wasn’t putting his voice in my head like Jack had. At least I hadn’t felt that pull at the front of my mind since Jack… since he died.

_Since I’d killed him_.

“I’m gonna… go, sir,” I said. “Do you want me to, uh, do the dishes, Professor?” I stood, pushing in my chair and taking my plate with my good hand, meeting my guardian’s gaze for one of the few times I’d managed to look into his eyes. They were dark, but I couldn’t tell what color they were.

“If you would, I would be most obliged, Scott. Thank you,” he said. I was already moving as he spoke, collecting dishes and stacking them on top of my own as I balanced them carefully and took the pile into the kitchen. “Once you are done, Scott, please join me in the second study in the west wing.”

“Yessir,” I said over my shoulder as I started rinsing off the dishes one-handed. One at a time. In the sink, scrubbing with the brush and soap. Onto the rack. It was meditative work, and I liked it. It kept my mind from wandering too much.

I finally completed my self-assigned task, and checked my watch habitually as I washed my hand and dried it on the towel. 7:31 PM. Huh. Not as late as I’d expected. My internal clock was off—usually, I could estimate the time very well. All the moving around I’d done with Jack had thrown me, I supposed.

Professor Xavier was where he said he’d be in the second study on the west wing hall, sitting in his wheelchair at one of the small chess tables with an open book in his hand. He closed it as I entered, my hands shoved deep in my pockets as I shuffled over quietly.

“Ah, good. Would you care for a game, Mr. Summers?”

I said that I did, and we played.

I won for the first time that evening—my fourth chess game I’d ever played. At first I was afraid the Professor would be mad at me for winning—but he beamed at me from across the small table.

“I am very impressed, Scott. Well done indeed. I didn’t see that move coming at all,” he said, an almost boyish grin on his face. I didn’t smile back, but I nodded, heat rising to my cheeks with pride.

“Thank you, sir,” I said. “It just made sense, I guess. You left your king unguarded by your rook there, and your last knight was just a space off from where it needed to be. I just had to move my bishop there, and my queen there, and that one pawn there, and…” I trailed off. “Um, sorry, sir.”

“No, no. By all means. I’d like to know how I lost. That’s how you learn, after all. You make mistakes, and you correct them. I am no different than any other man in that regard, Scott,” he said. “Anyway, you have a natural strategic mind. I’d like to recommend a few books to you, if you’re up for the reading.”

“Yessir,” I said. It wasn’t like I had anything else to do now. He hadn’t told me to steal anything. Or blow anything up. Not yet, anyway. So I would play chess and I would read.

Professor Xavier gave me several books on strategy and tactics, from the theoretical to the applied. Battles and their recounts—Waterloo, Normandy, Agincourt, Gettysburg—and then biographies of famous leaders and strategists—Napoleon, Washington, Churchill. It was a large stack of books, and I had to make several trips from the study to my room to transfer all of them. Plus the other books the Professor had given me back at the hospital, I was set for months. I didn’t mind the recommendations, either. It was a nice change from just reading the news or watching dry television reruns.

After he’d secured me with the books, he bade me good night, and he went to his own room down the main hall and towards the north side of the mansion on the first floor. I was exhausted. It had been a long day. Leaving the hospital, dealing with my shit, exploring the grounds.

There were pajamas tucked into one of the drawers of the two dressers, and I put on a pair of the plaid pajama shorts there, but I went shirtless. It was warm, even with the fan, and having the sheets on the bed tangle with my shirt and my recovering arm wasn’t my idea of a good time. I brushed my teeth before facing the huge bed, tugging back the covers with one hand and slipping underneath. I’d never slept in a bed this nice before. I could lay out in all my long-and-lanky glory without having my limbs fall off the edges.

Instead of wearing my usual glasses to bed as I had with Jack, I instead decided to put on the goggle lenses for the night. I never wanted to use my powers again, and I would do anything to make sure none of that damned red light escaped from my eyes. I sank back into the pillows—so soft!—and let out a long sigh as I closed my eyes.

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I could be in a place like this, with a bed like this, with someone who seemed to really care about me for once.

_Damn it, Summers. You’ve only known this guy for like a day. He could be bad news. He could be changing your thoughts._

Doubts rang through my head, but I didn’t care. They didn’t matter. If not for the Professor, I’d have died. I’d have been lost. Who cared if this was my last night on this pale blue planet? It would be a comfortable last night, anyway. Who cared if he was manipulating me like Jack had? I was used to it, and at least I was being manipulated in kinder conditions.

Xavier hadn’t hit me once. He hadn’t touched me, except for that time at the hospital, and he’d noticed my discomfort and stopped. He acknowledged my feelings. It was so… _weird._ But it was good weird. And hell, I kind of liked the man in a way. He was a bit intense, but he was kind and gentle in most things.

I thought of my parents.

“Am I doing the right thing?” I murmured to the dark red ceiling, my voice strange and not quite mine in the silence of the near-empty mansion.

For the first time in a long time, I felt like they would have said “Yes.”


	10. Free

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some chains broken, others forged.

The first month of my time with Professor Charles Xavier was the best month of my life since the plane crash. I read the books he’d given me avidly, and the topics never failed to interest me. There was a certain orderliness about strategy. There was always purpose behind it, and with that purpose usually came the drive of righteousness, of fighting for a worthy cause, at least in the minds of the leaders and those engaged in the battle. I liked it when things fell into place, when strategies played out exactly how they were supposed to, and when a backup plan came in like a charm, saving the day.

I liked the easy black and white, good and evil conflicts, too. It was easy to root for Arthur, “the Wart,” in _The Once and Future King._ It was easy to root for the Union in the all-too-real conflict of the Civil War. I liked easy, I liked simple. I liked it when things _made sense_ to me—I suppose something common with everyone, but even more so when it came to things just… happening the way I expected them to.

There were the books, which I enjoyed, and Professor Xavier had been right when he’d said that there was a lot to do around the mansion. I took up daily chores as a force of habit and also as a force of comfort. Making myself useful felt good, and I didn’t like to be idle and just lounge around, especially when the Professor had done so much for me. Still, he limited my activities while I was in the first couple weeks of recovery. When I was finally able to move around more without hurting, he even let me start learning to ride the horses.

It wasn’t the best way to learn, probably. The Professor would instruct me mostly by voice as I went about saddling up the horse I would be riding, fixing the straps and harness and making sure the bit was in place properly. At first I didn’t like it. I didn’t have total control over this other creature—how could I direct it if I couldn’t steer it with certainty? As I learned, though, and as I started to go out to the stables on my own and bond with the horse I’d selected as “mine”—a dark mare named “Sky’s Light” (I just called her Skye for short)—I began to understand the horse. I think she started to understand me, too. It was easier to direct Skye’s movements when I understood things as she did, and when I gained more and more experience.

The first time I ran her at a gallop, I felt like I was flying.

Professor Xavier and I played a lot of games together during those weeks. Mostly chess. I won often, almost all the time, but sometimes the Professor still pulled one on me and I lost. I learned from each loss, and I never lost a game twice in a row. We played Risk—one of my favorites, and Battleship. Stratego and backgammon. I liked the games where it was less luck and more strategy, because I liked to be in control of whether or not I was winning, but there was always an element of luck in games the same as there was in the battles I’d read about in those books. I just had to adapt to the hand I was dealt, so to speak. The same as I’d been doing all my life, really.

Despite how much I was growing to love that big, empty mansion and the Professor and my new life, I couldn’t seem to shake the nightmares. Every night, without end. Even with the huge and comfortable bed, I started to dread falling asleep, and I had constant bags under my eyes that I easily hid with my ruby quartz glasses. Professor Xavier seemed to have noticed my lack of sleep anyway, and offered to talk about it. He offered to talk about things with me a lot. I never took him up on it in that first month.

My headaches were getting worse again, even with the pain medication. The Professor had picked up on that, too. I supposed it was kind of hard to hide things from a telepath.

He prescribed me a medication, and the migraines got better for a bit, but one morning I woke up with tears running down my cheeks, and I couldn’t tell if it had been from the splitting pain in my head or the nightmare I’d just awoken from.

“Scott, may I speak to you after breakfast in my office?” Professor Xavier asked as I sat at the dining table with the hand of my formerly dislocated arm pressed hard against my forehead while I ate. I couldn’t stop the pain. It was overwhelming, and it felt like if it kept getting worse at this rate, my head would just explode like a fucking watermelon.

I couldn’t even respond to him as I nodded stiffly, picking at my morning meal of scrambled eggs. I’d learned to cook that much in my time at the mansion, though anything more was asking for trouble.

After scraping the remains of my eggs into the garbage—the first time I hadn’t cleaned my plate in years—I dragged my feet to meet Professor Xavier in his office where he was waiting for me, fingers tented on the edge of the desk.

“Scott, I believe I might have a solution to your migraines, but I must warn you that you aren’t going to like it,” he began. I nodded dumbly, and he continued. “My theory, and corroborated by your own accounts you’ve told me, is that your mutant power has a connection with these intense headaches, and that withholding your energy blasts for extended periods of time creates a power buildup that must be released. In essence—you _need_ to use your power, Scott. I’m worried for your health if they are continued to be held back as they are now.”

I was silent for a few beats, absorbing his words, trying to think through the pain. It was hard to string together a coherent thought with my brain feeling like it was about to start dripping out my ears.

“C-can’t you do something? Y’know, like… with your mind? Telepathically, sir?” I offered, wincing and letting my head fall into my hands as I focused on breathing. God, it hurt, it _hurt._ I couldn’t even hide it anymore, like I tended to do with all my pains around others. I didn’t like to complain. Didn’t like to make a fuss.

“I’m afraid this is beyond my power, Scott. At the most, I could make the pain lessen or go away with a psychic inhibitor, but the power itself would still be there, building up. I don’t want to risk it getting any more severe,” Xavier said. The wheels were still turning in my head. What was he saying? “I’m saying that you need to take off your glasses in a safe environment, and let some of that power out.”

“No,” I said, overlapping his words before he’d even finished speaking and swaying as I got to my feet. “Never ask me to do that.” I didn’t even care that he’d scanned my thoughts just then. I just… I couldn’t do what he wanted me to do. I could never use those stupid powers again. Not after what happened. Not after I’d fucking _killed_ someone. How could he even ask me to do something like that? I started to walk away when I felt a tug at my mind. My eyes went wide. “Don’t _do_ that!” I clapped my hands to my temples, holding my head as I stumbled to the door, as if putting more distance between us could sever the connection. I didn’t know. Maybe it could.

“Scott, listen to me, please. I don’t know what might happen if you continue to hold out. You could die,” Professor Xavier said, his voice sterner than I’d ever heard it. I was leaning against the doorframe for support, head still in my hands, shaking slightly. The Professor rolled out from behind the desk towards me.

“S-so what if I die. I can’t. I can’t kill anyone else. I can’t take these off. Don’t make me take them off. Don’t make me open my eyes without them, ever, sir,” I said, stumbling over my words as I felt my blood pound in my skull to the beat of my heart.

“Let me help you, Scott. Let me in.” He reached for me, and I flinched, no, I jerked away to avoid his touch, spinning out of the doorway and into the hall. I started towards my room, planning to just collapse onto my bed. It hurt so bad. I couldn’t think. I felt sick to my stomach. Maybe I should—

My vision went spotty and I collapsed to the floor onto my knees, retching and gasping. Shit, shit. I threw up my scrambled egg breakfast onto the hardwood floor, a little more scrambled coming back up than it had been going down. Shit.

I saw Professor Xavier out of the corner of my eye, rolling up to my side. He put a hand on my back. I flinched again, but I didn’t have the energy to wrench myself away, still on my hands and knees as I coughed and felt my eyes well up with tears from the pain and the stench of vomit.

“Easy, son.”

A pull at my mind, and then something else. It was hard to describe. Like… if my mind was a sandbox and there were bits of gunk and rocks and stuff stuck in the sand, I felt a sieve come through and comb the garbage from the fine grains. I felt weirdly tingly, and then some of the pain was gone, and I felt less nauseated. He was in my head. I hated it. All I could think of was Jack again.

“Get out,” I said dully, propping myself up onto only my knees and swaying a bit as I got one foot underneath my body, my hands going out to steady myself. The Professor’s hand was still on my back, and like it or not, it helped to keep me from keeling over again.

“If I get out of your mind, you won’t be able to even make it to your bedroom, Scott. Come with me. Please. This is for your own good, son,” he said gently, but in that firm, strict tone that meant that he wasn’t letting me have a choice this time. The niceties of “please” were lost on me as I managed to stand again, looking down at the sad puddle of vomit at my feet. I felt awful about just leaving it.

Xavier’s hand left my back as I stood, but I still felt him in my head, like a weight in my skull. But my migraine didn’t feel like I was going to die anymore. So that was something.

“Come with me,” he repeated—an order. I walked alongside him as we went to one of the elevators. Where the hell were we going?

“I can handle it. Get out of my head. Please. Sir,” I said through my gritted teeth. I didn’t care if I could handle it or not. I just needed him _out._

Jack’s weight in my head was at the front, pulling, forcing, tugging.

Xavier’s was at the back, and then everywhere all at once, and I couldn’t even figure out where my thoughts ended and his influence began. He was so much stronger than Jack. He could make me do whatever he wanted, I realized. Even though my stomach wasn’t hurting from my migraine anymore, I felt it turn as I avoided looking at Professor Xavier in the elevator, staring at the wall instead as he fiddled with the buttons.

“You know I can’t do that, Scott. Relax, and this will be easier.”

Jack’s voice, in my head— _“If you just relax, sonny, this’ll be easier. Beatin’ you to a pulp will hurt a lot less for you if you just let it happen. Now turn around. NOW!”_

I pursed my lips, blinking slowly and deliberately, hard. Forcing the image and the memory away. I didn’t want the Professor to see. Not that. Not any of it.

I felt the lurch as the elevator moved, and then stopped—but it felt wrong. We had been going _down_ , not up. There was a basement to this place? But I hadn’t seen any buttons for a “B” floor earlier. What was this?

“This is the subbasement, Scott. A floor above us is mostly empty except for electronics, insulation, and piping. But here is what I really wanted to show you,” Professor Xavier said as the elevator doors opened to a long, pristine hallway with brushed metal walls.

“What is this, sir?” I wondered aloud, for the moment forgetting that the Professor was still in my head as I followed him into the strange space before us.

“The beginnings of something I continue to hope you will help me with, Scott. But we can get to that later. For now, you need to open your eyes. Here,” he paused as he turned to and opened a large door set into the wall, “is where you’ll be able to do that safely.”

“I said, no! Professor, sir, I _can’t!_ You don’t understand—!”

“I do, Scott. I can feel your pain. Not just from your migraine, but from your psyche. Come,” he ordered me again, and even as I resisted, I felt that tug in my mind. I stepped forward after him into the room.

It looked like a giant, empty planetarium. Domed walls rose high above our heads, with bright, impersonal lights shining down on us. The door closed behind me as I followed Professor Xavier inside, my will eroding. I wanted to run. He couldn’t make me do this. He couldn’t. But he was.

_Jack’s hands on my eyes, keeping them open. Red light. Him smiling, and then shattering. Dying. Gone._

I couldn’t.

“Energy dampeners are installed within the walls of the room. It can take anything you might throw at it, Scott. Including the full force of your optic beams. Take off your glasses, son.”

_Not your son, you’re not my dad, not your son, not Jack’s son, not anyone’s son anymore—_

“I won’t. Please, sir, _please_.” I felt tears brimming at my eyes and I was ashamed of my weakness as I stood stock-still at the entrance of the room.

“Scott, _listen._ You could die if you don’t open your eyes and let some of that power loose. If you wish, I can do it for you. I can open your eyes for you and you won’t even—”

“NO!”

I startled myself with the strength, at the volume of my yell. I hadn’t yelled like that before. Ever. Not with the anger I had now, not with the pain of the memories stacking up, over and over— _killer, murderer, freak, mutie, monster_ —in my head, even with Xavier in my mind still, even with his added weight in my skull, it was all _there_.

Professor Xavier rolled up to me so that he was right at my side. I clenched my fists. My hands were shaking, or maybe it was my whole body. It was getting harder to breathe, until it wasn’t, and I could feel the Professor in my thoughts. Making my body obey. Making me breathe.

_< Scott, you are safe. Everything is safe here. You will not hurt anyone here but yourself, and I can’t let you do that.>_

_Get out._

_ <Take off your glasses.>_

_No._

_ <I don’t want to force you to do anything against your will, but as your guardian, I must do what needs to be done to protect you.>_

_NO!_

My hand went up to my glasses without my consent, like before, and I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t.

_Please, please, no._

I squeezed my eyes shut as tight as I could.

_I’m gonna kill someone, I’m gonna kill you, Professor, please, don’t make me kill you. I don’t wanna hurt anyone else, please. Please, I see his face and it’s the only thing I ever see and I can’t, I CAN’T—_

_ <You can, and you will.>_

_PLEASE, NO! STOP! PLEASE!_

My eyes opened. There was the noise. That awful, awful noise. I felt Xavier heavy in my mind as the memories surged, threatening to overwhelm me as my throat tightened. He was clenching a mental fist around my mind, holding back the waves of hurt, the guilt, the pain, the shame, but even then some of it slipped through his fingers.

I stared at the wall, and nothing happened to it.

It felt _good._ And I hated it. I wanted to drop dead right there.

Red surged from my eyes. I could feel it, tingling slightly—in my eyes and in my skull—as it released, pouring out.

Damn me to hell, I pushed it. I poured even more out even when Xavier loosened his grip on my mind. I was angry. I was so angry, and I heard myself yell wordlessly, maybe screaming, as I just _let go._

I stood there and I stared at the wall and Xavier had gone completely from my mind, and I imagined Jack shattering apart in my gaze and I was _glad._ I saw him shatter and I relished in it— _That’s what you get, you son of a bitch!_ —I wanted him to feel everything he’d put me through—

“Scott.”

I wanted him to die, over and over. I wanted him to suffer. I wanted him to feel what I’d felt.

“Scott!”

I shut my eyes and collapsed onto the floor in a heap, tears stinging at my eyes, my glasses folded in my hand as I let out a last, soft whimper.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ll never do it again, Jack, I’m sorry, sir, please. I messed up, I know, just please, don’t hurt me, don’t—don’t…” Tears were streaming down my face now. I couldn’t hold them back. I saw Jack in my head and I sobbed. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. Mom, Dad, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. S-sorry…”

“Shh.”

The weight, back in my head, soothing the cracks in my diamond mind as I sniffled at Professor Xavier’s feet, pushed my glasses back onto my nose.

“T-this is why. I can’t, Professor. I just can’t. I can’t do it. Not again. Don’t make me, please. I… I wanted to… I _wanted_ to hurt him and I’m a _murderer_ and I didn’t want to be, you have to believe me, please,” I rambled on. The weight was even heavier now, pulling at the edges of my mind. I closed my eyes beneath ruby quartz lenses, drawing my knees up to my chest, rocking.

“Shh, Scott. It’s okay. It’s alright.”

Something soothed my mind, quieting my thoughts. Moments, then minutes, as the tears dried and I stopped rocking. I just sat. Blank.

“It was all my fault,” I finally said, breaking the silence once more. I opened my eyes and stared at Professor Xavier’s feet in front of me. “It was me. I _wanted_ to kill him. I’m a monster.”

“He made his choice, Scott.”

“I guess I made mine, too, didn’t I, sir? I… I kept looking at him. I could have done something. I could’ve…”

“Scott, you were used. He had you under his thumb, quite literally at that moment. I’ve seen it through your eyes.”

“You looked at my memories,” I said in monotone, anger flaring and then fading on its own. How could I be mad at him? He’d done more for me than Jack ever had. He’d only used his powers as a last resort. It was my fault. It was always my fault.

“It’s not your fault. And yes, I looked at your memories. You were practically projecting them a few minutes ago, son. I did my best to replace them where they belonged, but your mind is a mess,” Professor Xavier said. Not an insult, just a statement, but I scoffed with mock amusement, expecting a kick to the head after such a sound, but none came—again, he didn’t touch me to hurt me.

“Where did they belong, sir?” I asked.

“Filed away in the past. They’ve been floating about in your mind for some time. With your permission, I’d like to see if I can—”

“Just do it,” I muttered. “Sir. Do it. Fix me, please. I’m broken, and I’m… there’s something wrong with me, and I’m scared of—of _me_ , so please, please. Just _help me._ ” I let my hands crawl up onto the crown of my head as I let it fall between my knees, digging my fingers into my hair as I scrunched my eyes shut again. I just wanted it all gone. I wanted to be normal again. I wanted Jack gone. For good. I didn’t want to see him in my nightmares, or whenever I closed my eyes, or ever again.

“I will not erase your memories, Scott. On a matter of principle. What I can do is help you organize your mind. Doing so will make it easier to—”

“I said just _do it already, please,_ ” I begged. “Please, sir. You’ve been in my head. Y-you know how it is. I can’t. I can’t do this anymore.”

I didn’t cry, but my whole body shuddered with dry sobs as I gasped and felt my throat tighten and my stomach turn as I shifted my arms and hugged my knees to my chest. I felt like a child. Lost. Confused. Scared. I felt like I was running away again, not sure what was happening, like it was all a weird game, or a dream.

“Very well.”

The sieve from before was exchanged for one with an even finer mesh. Jack was torn away from the front of my mind, shoved back, screaming—was it him or me?—into a door, into a folder, into a file cabinet that was neatly labeled. Each punch he’d landed, each kick, each burn, each shouted insult, into a file folder. Vince and Miriam, into a folder. Each crime, a folder. All tucked away. One by one.

I _was_ screaming now. I could feel my throat burning.

The weight in my mind grew until it felt like I was being crushed out of my own head.

The orphanage. Nate. Filed away. Flashes, images of a table, of scalpels, of red and cold and shadows and a deep-rooted fear of which I did not know the name, shuffled away, deep, deep into the back of the filing cabinet. Toby. Broken body, broken boy, tucked away.

The plane crash.

Screaming. I couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t feel. I was numb. Cold. There was red, and fire, and screaming, so much screaming—I love you—don’t let go—hold on—falling.

Alex. I held him close.

I felt the snow under my shoulder—or was it the floor?—as I lay there shaking. The snow was shoveled into a folder and put away, too. Along with the blood, the pain, the fear, the plane itself, and all I had of my parents’ memories.

There wasn’t much left to tidy up after the plane crash and those few scattered flashes of memory, because there just didn’t seem to be anything there at all.

The weight lessened, and I stopped screaming.

Why did it hurt so much?

Why was it so dark in my head? Where was that shadow coming from? It hurt. It was cold, even after putting away the snow.

The file cabinet slammed shut, and I was the one who closed it.

A hand, gentle, on my shoulder, and I didn’t flinch away.

_< Scott, it’s done.>_

_I know, sir._

_ <You can open those memories anytime you’d like now. I can’t help you put it all away again every time—I might not be around—but now you have a place for everything. It might be hard to find where things go at first, but it will get easier with time.>_

_Thank you, sir._

I opened my eyes. I was on the floor of the empty, domed room, with Professor Xavier’s hand on my shoulder, warm and solid, grounding me. My head ached slightly, but not like the migraines with which I was familiar. More like something had just smashed through my mind and dragged all the debris with it as it had settled.

“Are you alright, Scott?”

I coughed—my sore but almost healed ribs twinging with pain—and then started to sit up. I felt so… so focused. So clear. I blinked and Jack wasn’t there anymore. I could think about him and I didn’t feel the pain, not like it had been. I put him away again. _I could put him away._ I felt like crying again, but this time in joy. _I could put him away!_

“I’m… I’m good, sir. Fine. Th-thank you. I…” I trailed off, my voice slightly hoarse. I sat up and let Xavier’s hand fall from my shoulder, getting to my feet. Shaky, at first, and then there I was, standing. I straightened, putting my shoulders back, squaring myself. “Sir… why didn’t you fix me sooner? I… It hurt.” Still hated complaining. Hated saying that it hurt. I turned from the wall—the Professor hadn’t been quite right about the room standing up to just everything, there was a huge dent, almost tearing through the thick metal plating where I’d let loose—and faced him, looking down at him in his wheelchair.

“Your mind was in a fragile state when you arrived, as was your body. I shouldn’t have let it reach the point it had, when your powers were almost tearing you apart. The fault was mine for that, and I apologize,” he said, nodding his head at me. He was right, of course. I remembered—god, even now, remembering was awful—and then I put the memories away, shuffling them back into the folders. Replacing them in the cabinet. Closing it. “How are you feeling? Is your head alright? Your mind?”

“Y-yeah. I mean, yes. I think so, sir. It’s just… I’ve never felt this… sure? It’s still, um, hard. But there’s a place for everything now—it’s organized—and I can deal with that. I can put things away now,” I said, looking down at my hands, and then looking back up to meet Professor Xavier’s eyes. I hadn’t really done that much before. They were kind eyes. Stern, but warm. And then he smiled at me.

“I’m so glad, Scott. Tell me, can you open your eyes and look at the wall again? Er, preferably a different section of wall this time. I’ll have to repair that,” he said, somewhat lightly.

“Sorry, sir,” I felt my heart plummet in shame as I looked at the wall. _I’d done that. I’d killed a man with that._ I closed my eyes. Breathed. Put it away. Put it away, Summers. Put it away. “I think I can do that, yessir.”

“Can you do that for me now?”

“I think so, sir.” I took a deep breath. Held the filing cabinet in my mind closed. Stared at the wall. Lifted my hand to my glasses.

I opened my eyes and heard the noise and felt the tingling sensation throughout my head—Xavier’s mental presence was gone completely, as far as I could tell—and there was nothing but me and the red.

I let it go, but the anger and the rage was gone. I held the cabinet closed. It shook. It wanted to open. I wouldn’t let it. I had to control it.

I closed my eyes again, replaced the glasses, and turned back to the Professor.

“I’m proud of you, Scott.”

And for the first time in years, I smiled.


End file.
